So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
The latest Home Office figures showed 1,072 migrants made the journey in 13 boats on Friday.
82 people per boat. Is there is something weird going on with how these stats are recorded? That's a big boat, and something the French could very easily put a stop to.
Remember though, no more than 84, otherwise the UK government will wag their finger at you.
I think the reports say the tactics have changed slightly. The smugglers have these bigger boats which they don't land to pick up people, they ask people to wade out to meet them.
I had a debate about this yesterday, with a lefty friend
He was nobly saying that Eritreans have an awful time, and anyone who gets to the UK should be let in, as they are certainly and rightfully seeking asylum. I pointed out to him that this logic means we should let in every Eritrean that gets here (likewise Somalians, Sudanese, Afghans) which is potentially millions of people which we cannot do. It is impossible and would destroy the country culturally and bankrupt us, to boot
He literally had no answer. It was weird. He could not square his principles with the facts of the matter. So he sort of sat there, mute, then eventually blamed Brexit for us being broke and unable to afford the housing of 17 million Somalians
Like I said, the Left is going mad. It is like the world no longer fits their worldview, so they are retreating into a bubble of consoling nonsense
Of course this also happens to rightwingers. Neil Oliver, cited here today, is an example
Neither 'side' has a morally OK answer. It is impossible to let everyone in, and impossible not to heed the the need of the fleeing Ukrainian mother and small children whose father has been captured and tortured and killed by Russians. (And I notice that the fleeing Ukrainians remain not on the hit list for Reform and Mr Robinson.)
I am sure the leftist is silenced. I am not a leftist, I am a culturally conservative, liberal Christian centre rightist withouit a party to represent me and I am silenced too. Isn't every thinking person silenced by the issue of hundreds of millions immiserated by terrible governance worldwide? Thinking that only the other 'side' has a moral problem is pure displacement activity.
As a leftist I'm in favour of letting in (a) people we actually need (the obvious area is the NHS, which is already predominantly of immigrant descent) PLUS (b) as many as we feel we can process reasonably quickly and have a strong case. Complying with the convention but taking forever to deal with it, and/or refusing to process anyone who doesn't make it to UK soil, seem to me less important. It's likely that the conditions will be stricter than now - that seems to me less undesirable than the Hunger Games solution of insisting on physical arrival.
The Welsh government wants Wales to become "a zero waste nation" by 2050, and recently advised councils against collecting general waste more frequently than once every three or four weeks.
One of the ways I know the Starmer Government is infinitely worse than the 2019 to 2024 administration is that Urquhart can now spam the site with 200 posts a day explaining how useless this Government is, and yet prior to July 2024 he couldn't find any negative stories about the economy, small boats, immigration, housing or the NHS to post.
Quite telling really.
Not a bad achievement re recycling. Holes in the ground are in really short supply these days. I know of a complex in Oxfordshire which seems to be quarried mainly so people can put rubbish in it. The stone is just a bonus (or possibly even a nuisance). But it does end up showing some veryh impressive long dinosaur trackways which can, or at any rate could, be seen on open days.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
To be fair, I spent a very happy ten years immersed in the world of Kink so I am unusually well-informed
Some of the kinks I encountered were utterly mind boggling. Or depraved. Not my cup of kinky coffee but fascinating in their variety
Pay pigs and fin doms seem sweetly basic in comparison, and yes it is a financial form of submissive masochism
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
In other news I did the Hampton And Kempton Waterworks Railway (2ft gauge) on the Surrey/London borders earlier today. Not too much track captured to be frank, but they have big expansion plans! They decorated one of their engines to look like Stephenson's Rocket, perhaps a bit tacky, but it's all part of Railway 200 this weekend.
Bloody fools. Why didn't they go for the Locomotion No. 1?
Honestly, nearly as ignorant of history as Alice Roberts or Catherine Nixey.
I wouldn't mind being washed up on a desert island with Professor Alice
EDIT: Shit! Did I just press send???
I was at Beamish open air museum recently, they have a working replica of Puffing Billy in service, although only pulling passengers on a short waggonway route
On PB's desert island, you'll be able to see a Puffing Sunil in service, although also not pulling for very long.
Unless the track is circular, obvs.
On PB's desert island, only the arguments are circular. Everything else is a dead end.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
The key is to understand it as extreme masochism. The fact the men (and it is nearly always, or always, men) get basically nothing out of the deal. not even pics or vids, maybe just a tirade of online abuse, even as they send ££££ - makes it even MORE humiliating and painful, and thus more erotic for the masochistic man
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Starmer's best week just got better! Tech giants starting to really like what they see in UK and now Trump is making it difficult to do the work in California.
The US has everything going for it in the tech industry: vast pools of highly mobile talent, deep VC pockets, a very liquid tech-heavy Nasdaq market, loads of giants HQd there, secondary hubs spawning all over the country, deeply embedded culture and muscle memory, and now it even has a very attractive corporate tax environment for multinationals.
Everything going for it except one thing: the cost of labour. OK two things: much of the really cutting edge AI talent is in the UK.
The only projects I’ve had in the last 5 years involving moving activity out of, rather than into the USA have been driven by labour cost arbitrage. Including one involving major relocations to Canada.
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
I wish Charles a long and healthy reign, but I am already sensing that William and Kate will be a great King and Queen. I feel they're for Britain, and they haven't had their heads turned by all that California garbage like the spare.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
The key is to understand it as extreme masochism. The fact the men (and it is nearly always, or always, men) get basically nothing out of the deal. not even pics or vids, maybe just a tirade of online abuse, even as they send ££££ - makes it even MORE humiliating and painful, and thus more erotic for the masochistic man
Yes, I did rationalise it in the convo that it was just another iteration of masochism but I found it odd, in my filthy dark mind, that there was no physical or optical sexual kick as part of it.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
Oh, I daresay there are some people like that. But any way that money can be transferred for a 'service', where the 'service' is nebulous at best, is good for money laundering.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
It’s particularly low cost if the activity is R&D that qualifies for the refundable RDEC. Government actually handing you money to do R&D here.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
Oh, I daresay there are some people like that. But any way that money can be transferred for a 'service', where the 'service' is nebulous at best, is good for money laundering.
That only works where the sender is going to be getting the funds back, minus a cut. It’s not that, the conversation was about a large investment that’s going in to this kink. As a business it’s similar to only fans where people will spend cash on thrills and someone sits in the middle taking a nice cut.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
With comparing those three political figures, at present I would say from worst to best: Robinson Corbyn Farage
But it's not really a fair contest, because to my knowledge Robinson doesn't have a programme for Government and we just have no idea what he'd do. It's very difficult to see him creating any sort of team to govern. So my answer is not purely based on him being a big old racist (though that is a major drawback) but being a complete political unknown. At least with Jezza you'd know the shite you'd be getting.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Yes, no Dane for scale is like Hamlet without the prince.
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
I wish Charles a long and healthy reign, but I am already sensing that William and Kate will be a great King and Queen. I feel they're for Britain, and they haven't had their heads turned by all that California garbage like the spare.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
We had, by most standards, a great monarch for over 70 years. I'm not sure what you're on about concerning "resurgence" and "patriotism". The Monarchy represents all of Britain and reflects our great diversity and celebrates it and I'm sure William and Kate (and their children) will be part of that recognition of the changing nature of Britain.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Thanks. I'm slightly shocked at the blank response
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
I see Trump's call for the military to be used against boats carrying illegal immigrants has received pretty short shrift from the, er, military.
I did read somewhere there was a lot of admiration for the Palace and Government for the way Trump was kept well away from the British people - I think "kettled in Windsor Castle" was a good expression,. Once again, the Royal Family act unselfishly in the interests of the country.
WRT @Leon 's question, I would find Robinson more threatening than Corbyn. Corbyn is more threatening than Farage.
I don't want any of them.
By coincidence, some chipper north eastern chap has written a piece this weekend for the Speccie about how if it really came down to the chips he would choose Laxley-Lemon over Corbyn.
Well, I say Corbyn, but to be strictly accurate he comes out against the anti-Tom march organizer who is some SWP major league left activist.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Thanks. I'm slightly shocked at the blank response
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
We are saving our Great Danish enthusiasm for next month, when it will be the 50th anniversary of Rinka's funeral.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
Oh, I daresay there are some people like that. But any way that money can be transferred for a 'service', where the 'service' is nebulous at best, is good for money laundering.
That only works where the sender is going to be getting the funds back, minus a cut. It’s not that, the conversation was about a large investment that’s going in to this kink. As a business it’s similar to only fans where people will spend cash on thrills and someone sits in the middle taking a nice cut.
And you don't think that's happening in some/many of these cases?
I fully acknowledge that there will be some people genuinely doing it. But not all.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Thanks. I'm slightly shocked at the blank response
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
If it cheers you up I think that you've recently posted quite a lot that's sensible and thought through in your political ramblings. You seem to be emerging as a sort of true blue Tory, but with Reform spurs. Whatever next!
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I remember travelling in the early days of the DLR (around 1990) with a colleague who went to work for the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). We both looked out over the expanse of the undeveloped Docklands and he certainly saw the potential and the money - I'm not sure I did.
WRT @Leon 's question, I would find Robinson more threatening than Corbyn. Corbyn is more threatening than Farage.
I don't want any of them.
By coincidence, some chipper north eastern chap has written a piece this weekend for the Speccie about how if it really came down to the chips he would choose Laxley-Lemon over Corbyn.
Well, I say Corbyn, but to be strictly accurate he comes out against the anti-Tom march organizer who is some SWP major league left activist.
Who is that?
I did read the piece last week by that tosser who used to post on here (thankfully, a long, long time ago) regarding UK gun laws. It wasn't him was it?
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
Did the janitor disguise himself as a ghost as part of the kink?
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I remember travelling in the early days of the DLR (around 1990) with a colleague who went to work for the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC). We both looked out over the expanse of the undeveloped Docklands and he certainly saw the potential and the money - I'm not sure I did.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
Did the janitor disguise himself as a ghost as part of the kink?
No, he was the one who got off by being stabbed in the arras.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
Did the janitor disguise himself as a ghost as part of the kink?
If it wasn't for you pesky kids I'd have posted my quip ahead of yours. Drat, drat and double drat! Oh wait, wrong dog owner and wrong Hanna Barbera cartoon.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
Oh, I daresay there are some people like that. But any way that money can be transferred for a 'service', where the 'service' is nebulous at best, is good for money laundering.
That only works where the sender is going to be getting the funds back, minus a cut. It’s not that, the conversation was about a large investment that’s going in to this kink. As a business it’s similar to only fans where people will spend cash on thrills and someone sits in the middle taking a nice cut.
And you don't think that's happening in some/many of these cases?
I fully acknowledge that there will be some people genuinely doing it. But not all.
The classics are losing money at the racetracks, casinos and buy art for far more than its value.
It’s about money changing hands - doesn’t have to be laundering.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
I wish Charles a long and healthy reign, but I am already sensing that William and Kate will be a great King and Queen. I feel they're for Britain, and they haven't had their heads turned by all that California garbage like the spare.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
We had, by most standards, a great monarch for over 70 years. I'm not sure what you're on about concerning "resurgence" and "patriotism". The Monarchy represents all of Britain and reflects our great diversity and celebrates it and I'm sure William and Kate (and their children) will be part of that recognition of the changing nature of Britain.
Well, let me clarify. The left in all parties and walks of life has led the country to the brink of social and economical collapse, and soon you're going to have your arse handed to you, and not be in back power for a very long time. During that time, without the toxic and divisive dogma of the left seeping into everything like a case of deathwatch beetle, I expect the country to thrive, both economically and socially - and creatively. That isn't a racist dog whistle - anticipate and would like people of all colours, creeds and persuasions to thrive here.
Britain is constantly changing, as it must, but I suspect the change you're referring to is that sanctioned by 'progressive' parties, who want to own the concept of progress, so 'forward looking' means more of what they want and 'reactionary' is anyone who objects to more of what they want. That world view is well past its sell-by date. A restoration of our constitution and our liberties is also a change.
Just as Victoria represented the stolid respectability of her era, and Charles II the bawdy fun of his, I see in William and Kate the potential to be the figureheads of a new and different age.
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
I wish Charles a long and healthy reign, but I am already sensing that William and Kate will be a great King and Queen. I feel they're for Britain, and they haven't had their heads turned by all that California garbage like the spare.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
We had, by most standards, a great monarch for over 70 years. I'm not sure what you're on about concerning "resurgence" and "patriotism". The Monarchy represents all of Britain and reflects our great diversity and celebrates it and I'm sure William and Kate (and their children) will be part of that recognition of the changing nature of Britain.
Well, let me clarify. The left in all parties and walks of life has led the country to the brink of social and economical collapse, and soon you're going to have your arse handed to you, and not be in back power for a very long time. During that time, without the toxic and divisive dogma of the left seeping into everything like a case of deathwatch beetle, I expect the country to thrive, both economically and socially - and creatively. That isn't a racist dog whistle - anticipate and would like people of all colours, creeds and persuasions to thrive here.
Britain is constantly changing, as it must, but I suspect the change you're referring to is that sanctioned by 'progressive' parties, who want to own the concept of progress, so 'forward looking' means more of what they want and 'reactionary' is anyone who objects to more of what they want. That world view is well past its sell-by date. A restoration of our constitution and our liberties is also a change.
Just as Victoria represented the stolid respectability of her era, and Charles II the bawdy fun of his, I see in William and Kate the potential to be the figureheads of a new and different age.
You are in no position to comment on the Royal Family when your favourite Prime Minister saw off the much loved Queen Elizabeth II.
The US refuses to sell the Patriot air defense system, — The Atlantic.
The Pentagon has classified certain weapons types, including Patriot, as in short supply and is beginning to block new requests for these systems from European partners.
This development comes within the context of a broader "America First" policy and could increase tensions with NATO allies, especially in light of ongoing threats from russia. https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1969277177267892608
Can a TV company do a drama about how two shits from the Guardian endangered people's lives by essentially 'accidentally' releasing the unedited Wikileaks data?
I'm very confident the monarchy will still be with us in 50 years, and very likely 100 years.
I think you're right. I hope you're right too.
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
I wish Charles a long and healthy reign, but I am already sensing that William and Kate will be a great King and Queen. I feel they're for Britain, and they haven't had their heads turned by all that California garbage like the spare.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
We had, by most standards, a great monarch for over 70 years. I'm not sure what you're on about concerning "resurgence" and "patriotism". The Monarchy represents all of Britain and reflects our great diversity and celebrates it and I'm sure William and Kate (and their children) will be part of that recognition of the changing nature of Britain.
Well, let me clarify. The left in all parties and walks of life has led the country to the brink of social and economical collapse, and soon you're going to have your arse handed to you, and not be in back power for a very long time. During that time, without the toxic and divisive dogma of the left seeping into everything like a case of deathwatch beetle, I expect the country to thrive, both economically and socially - and creatively. That isn't a racist dog whistle - anticipate and would like people of all colours, creeds and persuasions to thrive here.
Britain is constantly changing, as it must, but I suspect the change you're referring to is that sanctioned by 'progressive' parties, who want to own the concept of progress, so 'forward looking' means more of what they want and 'reactionary' is anyone who objects to more of what they want. That world view is well past its sell-by date. A restoration of our constitution and our liberties is also a change.
Just as Victoria represented the stolid respectability of her era, and Charles II the bawdy fun of his, I see in William and Kate the potential to be the figureheads of a new and different age.
Oh dear, I suppose the "left" includes the long periods of Conservative-led Government from 1979 to 1997 and 2010 to 2024.
I don't see us as being "at the brink of social and economic collapse" either and if we are, I can't imagine the journey began on July 5th 2024. Nor do I imagine for one second Reform, who I imagine you are desperate to see take control of the Government of the country, will do anything than disappoint you even further. They are a party of high spending and low taxation and even an economic illiterate such as yourself will realise it will end poorly and probably after one term with them in charge.
I doubt it will happen but I could be wrong.
Your fixation with the "left" (and I'm not sure I even know what that term means any more for most people apart from "things I don't like and don't agree with") in all its forms blinds you. If you think somehow we are going to see a kind of McCarthyist purge of the people you don't like from every institution in the country, you're up for another disappointment.
Where I agree is William and Kate have the potential to lead the Monarchy and the country into the middle part of this century and beyond and just as Britain changed out of all recognition in the Second Elizabethan Age so it will continue to change while William is on the throne and the nature of those changes, well, let's just say I probably won't be around to see most of them.
The U.K. is exploring new ways to unlock the value of frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves will formally announce on 20 Sept.
"This is Russia’s war – and Russia should pay. It is right to explore all options to support Ukraine," she will say at a meeting in Copenhagen with her European counterparts.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Group of Seven (G7) countries froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, with about two-thirds held by the Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear.
European governments and G7 allies have been exploring ways to generate revenue from these immobilized funds short of outright seizing them which would have legal as well as political ramifications.
Reeves will announce that the U.K. is examining the use of reparation loans to send money to Ukraine. Kyiv would receive the money now but would only have to pay it back only once Russia pays for war reparations.
Unsurprising. But it'd be interesting to see how that question has been answered historically, over many PMs. I can imagine it's always quite high, as *some* opposition party supporters will always be crying "Resign!" against the PM.
“This is completely unfashionable, but why should people come here and get benefits that several generations of my family, who lived in terraced houses, have worked for and been in armies for? It’s a complicated problem that has to be addressed without fear or favour. We need to regulate it.”
Far from being unfashionable, Reform-ism iis all the rage, and many people are susceptible.
On a different topic, his vetsion of In Our Time has gone from Rado 4, which is another gloomy development for any more advanced discussion on BBC TV or radio, similarly to when he left Start The Week.
There are people capable of taking on the In Our Time role in due course. Jonathan Freedland, Amol Rajan, Rory Stewart could all have a go.
As to Lord Bragg's question; I live in north Cumberland where he comes from and where there are fewer people from other countries than most places. The ones I know (origins: Congo, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Nigeria, Turkey) are all in working families and work in: factories, agriculture, social care, NHS, driving.
Farmers and factories value them for their work ethic. Until recently social care was 100% staffed in the area from locals, but in the end the institutions couldn't cope without people from abroad. Farmers often complain they can't get local workers.
None of those 3.
David Runciman would be a good choice. His recent series on Post-War Britain - Postwar - was excellent .
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Yes, no Dane for scale is like Hamlet without the prince.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Thanks. I'm slightly shocked at the blank response
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
A Great Dane is too large to use for scale, so not of interest to PB.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
The U.K. is exploring new ways to unlock the value of frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves will formally announce on 20 Sept.
"This is Russia’s war – and Russia should pay. It is right to explore all options to support Ukraine," she will say at a meeting in Copenhagen with her European counterparts.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Group of Seven (G7) countries froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, with about two-thirds held by the Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear.
European governments and G7 allies have been exploring ways to generate revenue from these immobilized funds short of outright seizing them which would have legal as well as political ramifications.
Reeves will announce that the U.K. is examining the use of reparation loans to send money to Ukraine. Kyiv would receive the money now but would only have to pay it back only once Russia pays for war reparations.
That Tobias Elwood article in the Times is an excellent insight into how and why the Tories are fucked. But not in the way he’d like
He presents zero solutions. He has no clue. It’s just “let the right defect to Reform” and then somehow the Tories will return because… crickets. His prescriptions are as vacuous as Starmer’s
“National renewal”. “We need a consensus”. I kept waiting for “smash the gangs”
They are doomed
He is falling into the trap of thinking that there are lots of people sitting around desperately waiting for a centrist, moderate Tory Party to emerge.
A number of those voters have already fled elsewhere. Their worldview is now much more in tune with the LDs and in some cases Labour. The ones that do still exist are not numerous enough to gift the Tories an election winning majority on their own, or maybe even to retain second party status.
Like it or not, the party needs some the populist elements of the right in order to maintain its relevance. It does not need to become “hard right”, but it does need to talk to some of the popular key themes and constituencies . There are too many people on the right who have sympathies with the Reform message to ignore them.
To be fair, Ellwood doesn't need to fall into any trap. He is perfectly capable of inviting ridicule by his own behaviour:
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Yes, no Dane for scale is like Hamlet without the prince.
So had my mind spangled this afternoon from a conversation. Who knew there is a “kink” called Pay-pigs and Fin-Doms.
Apparently there are loads of men, the Pay Pigs, who get off just giving money to women, the Fin Doms, with no requirement for the women to do anything in return. Clearly a form of masochism but it’s an actual thing.
Good luck to the Fin Doms and all that but it’s very weird.
You are touchingly innocent
Oh I’m suitably au fait with a lot of things but it is the side of it where there is no exchange of sexual favours, pictures, company - purely the men get their kicks from just giving women money - I found surprising.
Money laundering.
I can’t tell you why that isn’t the answer but it’s not. It’s not as if these people are the sort who want pictures of Lilly Allen’s feet which is disturbing but a physical sexual kink.
The key is to understand it as extreme masochism. The fact the men (and it is nearly always, or always, men) get basically nothing out of the deal. not even pics or vids, maybe just a tirade of online abuse, even as they send ££££ - makes it even MORE humiliating and painful, and thus more erotic for the masochistic man
I'm trying to think of a suitable pitch that a charity organisation could use to get a slice of such funding.
The U.K. is exploring new ways to unlock the value of frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves will formally announce on 20 Sept.
"This is Russia’s war – and Russia should pay. It is right to explore all options to support Ukraine," she will say at a meeting in Copenhagen with her European counterparts.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Group of Seven (G7) countries froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, with about two-thirds held by the Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear.
European governments and G7 allies have been exploring ways to generate revenue from these immobilized funds short of outright seizing them which would have legal as well as political ramifications.
Reeves will announce that the U.K. is examining the use of reparation loans to send money to Ukraine. Kyiv would receive the money now but would only have to pay it back only once Russia pays for war reparations.
"Only once Russia pays for war reparations".
So about half an hour after the cold heat death of the universe, then.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
Under normal circumstances it would be goodnight Vienna, but with Putin and Trump in pole position to start World War III, events dear boy might help him out.
Today's capitulation by Agent Orange over the Baltic States being a case in point. And were such a catastrophe to happen UK politicians adjacent to Putin and Trump would go down like a pair of lead underpants.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I've never found India a particularly cheap place to develop: sure the people are inexpensive, but the smart ones have all left for the US and the quality of management is often poor. It can be a decent place to outsource maintenance of old apps, where the role is simply ensuring an existing code base is compatible with OS updates, legal/accounting changes, etc.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
A party leader/PM doesn't need to have the ideas personally; that what the party thinkers are for. Unless SKS has an approach that repels all boarders where ideas are concerned, I assume it's the party that doesn't have any ideas.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
A party leader/PM doesn't need to have the ideas personally; that what the party thinkers are for. Unless SKS has an approach that repels all boarders where ideas are concerned, I assume it's the party that doesn't have any ideas.
That's probably fair.
Or, extending it a little: the party has plenty of ideas, but they're all utterly incompatible. You'll have Labour MPs who think that balancing the budget matters. You'll have Labour MPs who want the workers to benefit over the 'rich'. You'll have Labour MPs who care only for Gaza. etc, etc.
Similar has been seen through all large political parties; but mostly they try to compromise, at least for the first couple of terms. There seems to be little compromise in this government. And that's where the PM comes in: to be a leader who creates, or enforces, compromise.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
Yes, I agree with this
What A Waste. Yes they had a shit hand, yes we are an ageing country, but still. They had FOURTEEN YEARS to prepare. To have bright ideas for the NHS, Social Care, Defence, the EU, anything. They could have come in on Day 1 and said Shit, it's bad, we've got to raise income tax, but we have brilliant ideas for this this and this, so cheer up, it's going to get better. The voters would have accepted that stance
Yet no. They had literally No Plans. Nothing. And they appointed two of the worst politicians in living memory to do the two most important jobs
The Welsh government wants Wales to become "a zero waste nation" by 2050, and recently advised councils against collecting general waste more frequently than once every three or four weeks.
One of the ways I know the Starmer Government is infinitely worse than the 2019 to 2024 administration is that Urquhart can now spam the site with 200 posts a day explaining how useless this Government is, and yet prior to July 2024 he couldn't find any negative stories about the economy, small boats, immigration, housing or the NHS to post.
Quite telling really.
Except that is absolute bollock. I was regularly posting how poor the previous government was. I have been regularly been commenting on the piss poor growth for donkeys years, that Sunak and Hunt made some terrible decisions e.g. I was quite clear I thought that immigration levels were too high, furlough went on too long, Rwanda scheme was nonsense, Sunak's NI++ was absolute moronic, etc.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I've never found India a particularly cheap place to develop: sure the people are inexpensive, but the smart ones have all left for the US and the quality of management is often poor. It can be a decent place to outsource maintenance of old apps, where the role is simply ensuring an existing code base is compatible with OS updates, legal/accounting changes, etc.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
I know of a company that did really well with a development office in Romania, of all places.
I once met a rather attractive American woman who was big into kink (she was fairly basic sub)
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
What's wrong with you all? Why so churlish?
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
There you go, Reluctantly gave you a like for your efforts despite there being no photo and a dog for scale.
Thanks. I'm slightly shocked at the blank response
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
It is also being paid to perform a criminal act, not sure even $10k enough for that especially if it was recorded
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I've never found India a particularly cheap place to develop: sure the people are inexpensive, but the smart ones have all left for the US and the quality of management is often poor. It can be a decent place to outsource maintenance of old apps, where the role is simply ensuring an existing code base is compatible with OS updates, legal/accounting changes, etc.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
I know of a company that did really well with a development office in Romania, of all places.
Oh, I can believe it.
If you have a local government that encourages tech companies to open development offices there, then they can become enormous successes, if they have the right people running them. Getting a really strong core you can build around is absolutely crucial. You also have to work hard to get in with the local Universities and colleges so you get to meet all the developers who are graduating.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I've never found India a particularly cheap place to develop: sure the people are inexpensive, but the smart ones have all left for the US and the quality of management is often poor. It can be a decent place to outsource maintenance of old apps, where the role is simply ensuring an existing code base is compatible with OS updates, legal/accounting changes, etc.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
I had a company in Estonia, the small team of local tech people we employed were great. India, we tried using some contractors, terrible experience, wasn't "cheap" after months of yes yes yes yes, we can do this, yes yes yes yes.., but you haven't actually done what I asked.
Along with Poland and Romania, Hungary is growing in for technical software dev field e.g. Hawkeye (the sports tracking people) now have a big dev team and not doing low level stuff like UI, they are doing proper computer vision research.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
A party leader/PM doesn't need to have the ideas personally; that what the party thinkers are for. Unless SKS has an approach that repels all boarders where ideas are concerned, I assume it's the party that doesn't have any ideas.
And not just the Labour party- nobody else has ideas either. Slogans, yes- ideas, no.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Bangalore has a severe garbage problem.
I know, I've seen some of the code that's come out of there.
The $100k H1B fee is good news for tech centres outside the US: it's not like tech giants aren't going to seek out the cheapest skilled labour they can find, especially in a world where everyone is connected by fiber. This way, it's just that those developers are going to sit in London and Krakow and Bangalore, rather than in Silicon Valley.
We get to keep more taxes, and more talent.
Suddenly the incentive for companies is to build development centres in places where it is easier to get visas for skilled labour.
Yep that was my thought too.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
A few years back, I work for a company that had, by merger and acquisition ended up with development units in
1) London (Canary Wharf) 2) Bulgaria 3) Canada 4) USA (Florida) 5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
I've never found India a particularly cheap place to develop: sure the people are inexpensive, but the smart ones have all left for the US and the quality of management is often poor. It can be a decent place to outsource maintenance of old apps, where the role is simply ensuring an existing code base is compatible with OS updates, legal/accounting changes, etc.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
I know of a company that did really well with a development office in Romania, of all places.
Completely unsurprising - see Bulgaria on my list.
Productivity in intellectual jobs - which development is - is a function of
1) Education 2) Skill 3) Practise 4) Culture 5) Economic & legal stability 6) Social development 7) plus more
This ends up creating a cost per *unit of productivity*
Simply going for the cheapest gets you failure every time.
The reason for Near Shoring (Eastern Europe) working is that wages lagged the other parts of the structure.
So you could get good developers in a productive culture and environment in Sofia, for less money than their position on the productivity curve.
My main thought of Starmer at the moment is: "What a waste!"
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
A party leader/PM doesn't need to have the ideas personally; that what the party thinkers are for. Unless SKS has an approach that repels all boarders where ideas are concerned, I assume it's the party that doesn't have any ideas.
And not just the Labour party- nobody else has ideas either. Slogans, yes- ideas, no.
The only "ideas" seem to be...AI will solve it all.....if we just increases keep increasing taxes...or we will just scrap everything and that will save trillions....or we will reheat a scheme from New Labour era.
Comments
Some of the kinks I encountered were utterly mind boggling. Or depraved. Not my cup of kinky coffee but fascinating in their variety
Pay pigs and fin doms seem sweetly basic in comparison, and yes it is a financial form of submissive masochism
Sorry, comp sci joke...
What will be a challenge is if and when we get a poor monarch. The actual impact will of course be small, but many years of adverse coverage would be hard to swim against.
We seem in quite good shape though.
It seems counterintuitive to consider London a 'low-cost outsourcing hub', but that's already the reality for many Silicon Valley companies. And will be even more so after this change.
Everything going for it except one thing: the cost of labour. OK two things: much of the really cutting edge AI talent is in the UK.
The only projects I’ve had in the last 5 years involving moving activity out of, rather than into the USA have been driven by labour cost arbitrage. Including one involving major relocations to Canada.
Nice problem to have though.
The Monarchy evolves to reflect the times, and William and Kate (it will always be the two I think, like William and Mary) will be the patriotic monarchs we need for the resurgence of the country.
She told me some hair raising stories, often involving her. eg for a while she was hanging out with a billionaire (he is moderately well known) who kept a harem of women, flying them around the world, Epstein style
He offered her $10,000 to have sex
Only slight downside, it was sex with his Great Dane, while he watched
1) London (Canary Wharf)
2) Bulgaria
3) Canada
4) USA (Florida)
5) India
Since we all working on the same code base, it was possible to do a study of the development cost *per feature released/bug fixed*
The order of cost, ascending, was above. Yes, the cheapest place to develop was a posh tower in Canary Wharf. India was dead last, by a long way.
This is the kind of heart-warming PB story - like @Sunil_Prasannan's mum's prize winning veg - that normally accrues dozens of "likes"
Yet, nothing
Robinson
Corbyn
Farage
But it's not really a fair contest, because to my knowledge Robinson doesn't have a programme for Government and we just have no idea what he'd do. It's very difficult to see him creating any sort of team to govern. So my answer is not purely based on him being a big old racist (though that is a major drawback) but being a complete political unknown. At least with Jezza you'd know the shite you'd be getting.
"Iran to suspend all cooperation with the IAEA."
https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/1969457914059374900
"Iran has successfully tested intercontinental ballistic missiles allegedly with range to reach the European continent."
https://x.com/WarMonitor3/status/1969461032377589943
It's one of those stories PB normally adores. It's got a cute dog - a Great Dane. It's a warm, heartening human interest anecdote. It's about someone being really lucky with an interesting new job. That should be mega-likes??
I see Trump's call for the military to be used against boats carrying illegal immigrants has received pretty short shrift from the, er, military.
I did read somewhere there was a lot of admiration for the Palace and Government for the way Trump was kept well away from the British people - I think "kettled in Windsor Castle" was a good expression,. Once again, the Royal Family act unselfishly in the interests of the country.
Well, I say Corbyn, but to be strictly accurate he comes out against the anti-Tom march organizer who is some SWP major league left activist.
I fully acknowledge that there will be some people genuinely doing it. But not all.
I did read the piece last week by that tosser who used to post on here (thankfully, a long, long time ago) regarding UK gun laws. It wasn't him was it?
Was it Shaggy and was the girl Daphne or Velma?
That was known a decade earlier.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/losangeles/news/california-legislature-bill-law-enforcement-face-coverings/
It’s about money changing hands - doesn’t have to be laundering.
Britain is constantly changing, as it must, but I suspect the change you're referring to is that sanctioned by 'progressive' parties, who want to own the concept of progress, so 'forward looking' means more of what they want and 'reactionary' is anyone who objects to more of what they want. That world view is well past its sell-by date. A restoration of our constitution and our liberties is also a change.
Just as Victoria represented the stolid respectability of her era, and Charles II the bawdy fun of his, I see in William and Kate the potential to be the figureheads of a new and different age.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/20/the-hack-this-spectacular-sprawling-story-about-the-phone-hacking-scandal-is-this-years-mr-bates
The Pentagon has classified certain weapons types, including Patriot, as in short supply and is beginning to block new requests for these systems from European partners.
This development comes within the context of a broader "America First" policy and could increase tensions with NATO allies, especially in light of ongoing threats from russia.
https://x.com/jurgen_nauditt/status/1969277177267892608
I don't see us as being "at the brink of social and economic collapse" either and if we are, I can't imagine the journey began on July 5th 2024. Nor do I imagine for one second Reform, who I imagine you are desperate to see take control of the Government of the country, will do anything than disappoint you even further. They are a party of high spending and low taxation and even an economic illiterate such as yourself will realise it will end poorly and probably after one term with them in charge.
I doubt it will happen but I could be wrong.
Your fixation with the "left" (and I'm not sure I even know what that term means any more for most people apart from "things I don't like and don't agree with") in all its forms blinds you. If you think somehow we are going to see a kind of McCarthyist purge of the people you don't like from every institution in the country, you're up for another disappointment.
Where I agree is William and Kate have the potential to lead the Monarchy and the country into the middle part of this century and beyond and just as Britain changed out of all recognition in the Second Elizabethan Age so it will continue to change while William is on the throne and the nature of those changes, well, let's just say I probably won't be around to see most of them.
https://x.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1969476656646484118?s=19
Higher than Rishi Sunak in 2024
The U.K. is exploring new ways to unlock the value of frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction, British Chancellor Rachel Reeves will formally announce on 20 Sept.
"This is Russia’s war – and Russia should pay. It is right to explore all options to support Ukraine," she will say at a meeting in Copenhagen with her European counterparts.
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the Group of Seven (G7) countries froze approximately $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, with about two-thirds held by the Belgian clearinghouse Euroclear.
European governments and G7 allies have been exploring ways to generate revenue from these immobilized funds short of outright seizing them which would have legal as well as political ramifications.
Reeves will announce that the U.K. is examining the use of reparation loans to send money to Ukraine. Kyiv would receive the money now but would only have to pay it back only once Russia pays for war reparations.
Ref 31 (+1)
Lab 22 (-1)
Con 17 (-1)
LD 12 (=)
Grn 10 (=)
David Runciman would be a good choice. His recent series on Post-War Britain - Postwar - was excellent .
He got power with a massive majority and a fundamentally weakened opposition. He had the opportunity to make massive changes to the UK. I may not have agreed with those changes, but the opportunity was there.
Yet he has squandered that inheritance. The government seems as rudderless and immune to ideas as one that has been in power for a decade or more; not one that has been ruling for just a year.
Labour need to get rid of him and replace him with someone who has ideas and can sell those ideas; or at least can develop a team to sell those ideas. But who? And is it too late?
Mainly, I think it's a silly question, whose answer says something about the silly place the nation has arrived at.
Wouldn't spoil the look of a mushroom risotto too much. Might make anything else unduly grey.
So about half an hour after the cold heat death of the universe, then.
Today's capitulation by Agent Orange over the Baltic States being a case in point. And were such a catastrophe to happen UK politicians adjacent to Putin and Trump would go down like a pair of lead underpants.
London has -historically- been a really excellent place to get development done, simply because it's one of the few places in the world with a really high density of talent, helped a lot by the financial services industry. The high cost of living also seems to help, because if you are an average developer you won't be able to afford to live there.
Los Angeles and Silicon Valley are like London in terms of talent depth, but salaries are fearsomly high, and you will have a constant issue of staff turnover. Estonia has modest costs, bright locals, and the policies to encourage tech startups (and offshore tech development) but the local talent pool is very small. Krakow and Lisbon are both decent these days - although Lisbon is a bit of a victim of its own success, with salaries having shot up.
I've had some success in Montreal in the past, although that was mostly because of massive local subsidies. And Colombia (Medellin) has been OK - good local talent, reasonable rates, but pretty much everyone from London that flew in to do work there ended up being mugged.
Just 13% support recognising Palestinian state with no conditions attached
https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1969469876504051879?s=19
Or, extending it a little: the party has plenty of ideas, but they're all utterly incompatible. You'll have Labour MPs who think that balancing the budget matters. You'll have Labour MPs who want the workers to benefit over the 'rich'. You'll have Labour MPs who care only for Gaza. etc, etc.
Similar has been seen through all large political parties; but mostly they try to compromise, at least for the first couple of terms. There seems to be little compromise in this government. And that's where the PM comes in: to be a leader who creates, or enforces, compromise.
What A Waste. Yes they had a shit hand, yes we are an ageing country, but still. They had FOURTEEN YEARS to prepare. To have bright ideas for the NHS, Social Care, Defence, the EU, anything. They could have come in on Day 1 and said Shit, it's bad, we've got to raise income tax, but we have brilliant ideas for this this and this, so cheer up, it's going to get better. The voters would have accepted that stance
Yet no. They had literally No Plans. Nothing. And they appointed two of the worst politicians in living memory to do the two most important jobs
What a waste
If you have a local government that encourages tech companies to open development offices there, then they can become enormous successes, if they have the right people running them. Getting a really strong core you can build around is absolutely crucial. You also have to work hard to get in with the local Universities and colleges so you get to meet all the developers who are graduating.
Along with Poland and Romania, Hungary is growing in for technical software dev field e.g. Hawkeye (the sports tracking people) now have a big dev team and not doing low level stuff like UI, they are doing proper computer vision research.
Liz Truss says Tommy Robinson has been "unfairly demonised".
So desperate of her.
https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/1969388779988287591
Productivity in intellectual jobs - which development is - is a function of
1) Education
2) Skill
3) Practise
4) Culture
5) Economic & legal stability
6) Social development
7) plus more
This ends up creating a cost per *unit of productivity*
Simply going for the cheapest gets you failure every time.
The reason for Near Shoring (Eastern Europe) working is that wages lagged the other parts of the structure.
So you could get good developers in a productive culture and environment in Sofia, for less money than their position on the productivity curve.
But they were getting 25% pay rises every year…