I saw that this morning. It illustrates both sides of the issue, since while the women interviewed clearly have a point, it is also notable that they say things like "I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness…. a robust social life, a focus on holistic health, compassionate and forthright communication skills, and functional independence" and all of them appear to see this long shopping list as a ”low bar". Presumably they have to also be able to tolerate the notoriously quiet, shy and retiring American women demanding all of this, as well?
Yes, and there is a certain similarity to politics.
Perhaps we have given people unrealistic expectations.
Having said that both my boys are coupled up with delightful young women in long term relationships, mostly because they are kind and empathetic young men.
I also think online dating, and the online world more widely, creates the illusion that there are millions of people you can meet and hope to choose from, which inevitably pushes towards adopting a longer list of requirements and setting a higher bar. When you only met people in real life, usually through friends, work, or in pubs and clubs, and the numbers of those who were both available and half way suitable was low, circumstances forced a more realistic approach. In particular, it’s too easy nowadays to reject the good in order to hold out for the best, who must surely be just a few more clicks away.
Yes. Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You
Or perhaps not. ..Christal Sharp, 39, a self-employed art teacher and wedding photographer from Oregon, was among many women who said drinking, drug use and other addictions among men, especially to porn, were a major factor in why they could not find a worthy partner.
“I tried internet dating after my divorce and … I only met men who were emotionally immature, wanted [someone] to take care of them or had major addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, video gaming and porn. Most guys were just looking for a woman to sleep with, not grow with.”..
I just want to check: she's OK with minor addictions to those things, right?
When everybody you encounter is an arsehole, you’re the arsehole.
Justified was great. Its a series I could probably watch again.
Wasn't so sold on the City Primeval reboot that came out a couple of years ago.
"I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said
Honestly very few of my male friends (including those married) would achieve all of these qualities.
I wonder what made her think she was deserving of a man with all those qualities.
Ryder cup: I made small bets on Fleetwood up to 320 with bf for SPOTY - very speculative - based on his PGA win this year (at last) and everyone loves him and the thought he may do well in the Ryder Cup.
He has a chance today of winning all his matches (5 points) which would be incredible. I think only 5 players have achieved a perfect score since the cup started in 1927.
He's now 70 with bf for SPOTY and could shorten further if he wins today.
Yesterday, for my birthday, my daughter had managed to get a copy of my late dad winning an episode of 15-1. She had also got digitised some early videos of our family from 1997 at the time her sister was born. In these pictures was my wife. Very different hair and glasses. I was also there and roughly half the man I am now. One of us has aged spectacularly, actually looks much better and sexier now. The other needs to get back to the gym.
You could get her gym membership as an early Christmas present.🤣
Only joking I am sure you have self awareness hitherto not demonstrated on here this morning.
"I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said
Honestly very few of my male friends (including those married) would achieve all of these qualities.
Quite the laundry list that I think not even 5% of the male population will meet. Calling them basic qualities is frankly absurd, they may be basic each in isolation but finding someone who has all of these is impossible, male or female. This is an unhealthy level of expectation.
I don't thing the dating thing is particularly surprising. Its long been shown in studies that women are much more biased towards dating across and up in the social hierarchy (men much more shallow into for tits and teeth). And over the past 50 years, women have been successful at school, university and in the workplace, so across is now higher bar, and as they have their own careers, they often don't "need" a man to support them in a way that was true years ago. So a man has to bring something to the table, not just a job.
And combined with that, I don't think men have adapted that well to this change and particularly in they are re-entering the dating pool in middle aged. Then through in the dating app where there is always another option to try around the corner, and average women get a lot more matches than average men.
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
Yesterday, for my birthday, my daughter had managed to get a copy of my late dad winning an episode of 15-1. She had also got digitised some early videos of our family from 1997 at the time her sister was born. In these pictures was my wife. Very different hair and glasses. I was also there and roughly half the man I am now. One of us has aged spectacularly, actually looks much better and sexier now. The other needs to get back to the gym.
You could get her gym membership as an early Christmas present.🤣
Only joking I am sure you have self awareness hitherto not demonstrated on here* this morning.
With Labour members now in favour of him going it’s surely only a matter of time. He has the worst polling of any prime minister in history. He’s not going to get any better - he’s now well over a year into the job and he’s actually getting worse
It’s time for Labour to go back to the flat and remove all traces of Skyr Toolmakersson, and take his possessions to the recycling centre
I just do not see how he is defenestrated, though if next May is as bad as predicted he may even decide to resign
What follows the end of his premiership who knows
If the bulk of the Cabinet turns on him and says “sorry old bean, but it’s time to go” - then he would surely go
Bit like the way they did for Thatcher, except she was a great prime minister and he’s a prat
Probably the only thing missing is a clear successor. Thatcher had several
You two remind me of two old women chortling in a telephone box
"I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said
Honestly very few of my male friends (including those married) would achieve all of these qualities.
It's so unrealistic, isn't it.
Before social media people stumbled into relationships, often through work, good and bad, and that was the filter - you know, real life.
I don't doubt men have similarly unrealistic expectations too!
Even when he is trying to sound tough, he spends minutes going off all over the place and manages to drop in things like blaming climate change for illegal migration....Reform UK are just going to clip the hell out of that.
With Labour members now in favour of him going it’s surely only a matter of time. He has the worst polling of any prime minister in history. He’s not going to get any better - he’s now well over a year into the job and he’s actually getting worse
It’s time for Labour to go back to the flat and remove all traces of Skyr Toolmakersson, and take his possessions to the recycling centre
I just do not see how he is defenestrated, though if next May is as bad as predicted he may even decide to resign
What follows the end of his premiership who knows
If the bulk of the Cabinet turns on him and says “sorry old bean, but it’s time to go” - then he would surely go
Bit like the way they did for Thatcher, except she was a great prime minister and he’s a prat
Probably the only thing missing is a clear successor. Thatcher had several
You two remind me of two old women chortling in a telephone box
“Picasso was a stickler for a morning ritual. “A litany that had to be repeated every day,” Gilot wrote. “He always woke up submerged in pessimism . . . Then he would groan and begin his lamentations. ‘I wonder, really, why I bother to get up. Why should I paint? . . . A life like mine is unbearable.’ . . . By two o’clock he thought of only one thing: to get down to painting. At two in the morning he was fresh as a rose. But the next morning it would begin all over again.”
Picasso painted at night, he told her, because when spotlit in the darkness, everything but the picture’s surface fell away in shadow and “the painter becomes hypnotised by his own work”. The habit stretched back to Montmartre, where his first great love and muse Fernande Olivier observed that “the total silence and the calm [at night] . . . encouraged inspiration” and that visitors unaware of his habits who woke him up in the morning were subjected to “violent and often foul language”.”
Picasso was very like me. I wonder if he ever considered that. Woke up in the 1930s while painting Guernica and thought “I’m really similar to that dude LEONDAMUS off of PB 90 years in the future”
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
And it probably didn't affect the amount of tax paid;
My personal view is that, if he did, this wasn't tax avoidance - because the tax outcome he achieved was the same as if he'd owned the field himself but let his parents use it. However there is no single legal definition of "tax avoidance", and others may disagree.
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
Yes, it’s all very unfair on Starmer to be criticised for using perfectly legal rules to minimise potential tax liabilities. It’s especially unfair considering he would never attack his opponents for using schemes to manage tax.
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
It all helps to chip away. Although there isn't much left to chop away.
Incompetence aside (name me the last competent Prime Minister) Starmer is guilty of demanding a second Referendum and bringing down Boris Johnson, when poor Boris was merely eating his birthday cake whilst Starmer was partying up in Durham.
"I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said
Honestly very few of my male friends (including those married) would achieve all of these qualities.
It's so unrealistic, isn't it.
Before social media people stumbled into relationships, often through work, good and bad, and that was the filter - you know, real life.
I don't doubt men have similarly unrealistic expectations too!
Even when he is trying to sound tough, he spends minutes going off all over the place and manages to drop in things like blaming climate change for illegal migration....Reform UK are just going to clip the hell out of that.
Starmer is a lawyer and he thinks everything can be resolved by changing or bringing in new laws
He would be a good Attorney General, but PM is a step too far and even his own membership know it
Ryder cup: I made small bets on Fleetwood up to 320 with bf for SPOTY - very speculative - based on his PGA win this year (at last) and everyone loves him and the thought he may do well in the Ryder Cup.
He has a chance today of winning all his matches (5 points) which would be incredible. I think only 5 players have achieved a perfect score since the cup started in 1927.
He's now 70 with bf for SPOTY and could shorten further if he wins today.
I think the staggeringly crass behavior of the American crowds has rather fired up the Europeans... But then these are the kind of Americans who think the creepy, humorless, criminally vulgar dullard they put into the White House shouldn't spend the rest of his life in Sing Sing.
Ryder cup: I made small bets on Fleetwood up to 320 with bf for SPOTY - very speculative - based on his PGA win this year (at last) and everyone loves him and the thought he may do well in the Ryder Cup.
He has a chance today of winning all his matches (5 points) which would be incredible. I think only 5 players have achieved a perfect score since the cup started in 1927.
He's now 70 with bf for SPOTY and could shorten further if he wins today.
I think the staggeringly crass behavior of the American crowds has rather fired up the Europeans... But then these are the kind of Americans who think the creepy, humorless, criminally vulgar dullard they put into the White House shouldn't spend the rest of his life in Sing Sing.
It was to their credit the US players tried to calm them down
I did say the other day about a not insignificant section of rich New Yorkers can be like.....and that Trump is an example of that rather than an outlier. The Ryder Cup is just exemplifying it.
“Picasso was a stickler for a morning ritual. “A litany that had to be repeated every day,” Gilot wrote. “He always woke up submerged in pessimism . . . Then he would groan and begin his lamentations. ‘I wonder, really, why I bother to get up. Why should I paint? . . . A life like mine is unbearable.’ . . . By two o’clock he thought of only one thing: to get down to painting. At two in the morning he was fresh as a rose. But the next morning it would begin all over again.”
Picasso painted at night, he told her, because when spotlit in the darkness, everything but the picture’s surface fell away in shadow and “the painter becomes hypnotised by his own work”. The habit stretched back to Montmartre, where his first great love and muse Fernande Olivier observed that “the total silence and the calm [at night] . . . encouraged inspiration” and that visitors unaware of his habits who woke him up in the morning were subjected to “violent and often foul language”.”
Picasso was very like me. I wonder if he ever considered that. Woke up in the 1930s while painting Guernica and thought “I’m really similar to that dude LEONDAMUS off of PB 90 years in the future”
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
Yes, it’s all very unfair on Starmer to be criticised for using perfectly legal rules to minimise potential tax liabilities. It’s especially unfair considering he would never attack his opponents for using schemes to manage tax.
Starmer said on Laura K this morning that he didn't set up a trust. He just bought a small field at the back of his parents house and gave it to them to use as a 'sanctuary' for four donkeys.
I saw that this morning. It illustrates both sides of the issue, since while the women interviewed clearly have a point, it is also notable that they say things like "I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness…. a robust social life, a focus on holistic health, compassionate and forthright communication skills, and functional independence" and all of them appear to see this long shopping list as a ”low bar". Presumably they have to also be able to tolerate the notoriously quiet, shy and retiring American women demanding all of this, as well?
Yes, and there is a certain similarity to politics.
Perhaps we have given people unrealistic expectations.
Having said that both my boys are coupled up with delightful young women in long term relationships, mostly because they are kind and empathetic young men.
I also think online dating, and the online world more widely, creates the illusion that there are millions of people you can meet and hope to choose from, which inevitably pushes towards adopting a longer list of requirements and setting a higher bar. When you only met people in real life, usually through friends, work, or in pubs and clubs, and the numbers of those who were both available and half way suitable was low, circumstances forced a more realistic approach. In particular, it’s too easy nowadays to reject the good in order to hold out for the best, who must surely be just a few more clicks away.
Yes. Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You
It's dead easy to meet lots of women. It's even easier to pay to meet them, if you are so inclined.
Having a successful relationship that last years, and looking after kids, is much harder. And a much better sign of a successful man.
That may be so, beta boy, but fucking hundreds of women is a lot more fun
It really isn't. Particularly if you end up on remand..
Times running story on Starmer tax planning on the donkey sanctuary.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
Yes, it’s all very unfair on Starmer to be criticised for using perfectly legal rules to minimise potential tax liabilities. It’s especially unfair considering he would never attack his opponents for using schemes to manage tax.
Starmer said on Laura K this morning that he didn't set up a trust. He just bought a small field at the back of his parents house and gave it to them to use as a 'sanctuary' for four donkeys.
With Labour members now in favour of him going it’s surely only a matter of time. He has the worst polling of any prime minister in history. He’s not going to get any better - he’s now well over a year into the job and he’s actually getting worse
It’s time for Labour to go back to the flat and remove all traces of Skyr Toolmakersson, and take his possessions to the recycling centre
I just do not see how he is defenestrated, though if next May is as bad as predicted he may even decide to resign
What follows the end of his premiership who knows
If the bulk of the Cabinet turns on him and says “sorry old bean, but it’s time to go” - then he would surely go
Bit like the way they did for Thatcher, except she was a great prime minister and he’s a prat
Probably the only thing missing is a clear successor. Thatcher had several
You two remind me of two old women chortling in a telephone box
Bingo!
Dai Bread and Polly Garter.......I'm trying to make you two characters believable
"I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness. These basic qualities are hard to find these days,” she said
Honestly very few of my male friends (including those married) would achieve all of these qualities.
It's so unrealistic, isn't it.
Before social media people stumbled into relationships, often through work, good and bad, and that was the filter - you know, real life.
I don't doubt men have similarly unrealistic expectations too!
Do you think so?
If I was young I'd be interested in women who were OK looking and no larger than a size 12. That's it.
But then again I wouldn't be expecting to alight on someone at first shot who ticks all the boxes upfront like these women seem to do with their array of filters. They don't want to engage with the real-life messy business.
Then again, I hate social media so what do I know.
So Starmer is now being criticised for buying a field for his mum so she could get close to donkeys which she loved . So a loving son wanted to bring some joy to his sick mum . Who gives a flying fxck how he brought the field . His primary motivation was to help his mum . There’s a lot of things to criticise Starmer on , attacking him on this issue is beyond pathetic .
I saw that this morning. It illustrates both sides of the issue, since while the women interviewed clearly have a point, it is also notable that they say things like "I’m looking for a man who … has goals and ambition, is intelligent, trustworthy, a provider, supportive, considerate, kind, assertive, masculine, honest, faithful, intentional, has a healthy self-esteem and a sense of humour, loves to go out, and likes fitness…. a robust social life, a focus on holistic health, compassionate and forthright communication skills, and functional independence" and all of them appear to see this long shopping list as a ”low bar". Presumably they have to also be able to tolerate the notoriously quiet, shy and retiring American women demanding all of this, as well?
Yes, and there is a certain similarity to politics.
Perhaps we have given people unrealistic expectations.
Having said that both my boys are coupled up with delightful young women in long term relationships, mostly because they are kind and empathetic young men.
I also think online dating, and the online world more widely, creates the illusion that there are millions of people you can meet and hope to choose from, which inevitably pushes towards adopting a longer list of requirements and setting a higher bar. When you only met people in real life, usually through friends, work, or in pubs and clubs, and the numbers of those who were both available and half way suitable was low, circumstances forced a more realistic approach. In particular, it’s too easy nowadays to reject the good in order to hold out for the best, who must surely be just a few more clicks away.
Yes. Millions of Women are Waiting to Meet You
Or perhaps not. ..Christal Sharp, 39, a self-employed art teacher and wedding photographer from Oregon, was among many women who said drinking, drug use and other addictions among men, especially to porn, were a major factor in why they could not find a worthy partner.
“I tried internet dating after my divorce and … I only met men who were emotionally immature, wanted [someone] to take care of them or had major addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, video gaming and porn. Most guys were just looking for a woman to sleep with, not grow with.”..
I just want to check: she's OK with minor addictions to those things, right?
When everybody you encounter is an arsehole, you’re the arsehole.
Justified was great. Its a series I could probably watch again.
Winona Hawkins: Raylan. Well, you do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don't see it, but honestly, you're the angriest man I have ever known.
According to Liz Oyer the former Pardons lawyer for the President, the Pardon power of the President has been monetised.
An example or two; a guy whose (according to Liz Oyer) mother paid a million bucks to Trump to have dinner at Mar a Lago allegedly in exchange for her son to get out of an 18 month jail sentence. In addition Trump waived his payback requirement to the Doctors and Nurses he was convicted of skimming money off their salaries. Another convicted financial fraudster who fraudulently acquired $600m from investors, paid Trump $2m for his campaign. So by paying Trump $2m, the convict saved $598m in restitution payment and gets to keep his multi million dollar yacht acquired using the stolen (from Doctors and Nurses) cash.
In what way is charging for pardons "not new"?The interview is fascinating. Not only is Trump taking substantial figures to pardon white collar criminals, significant fraudsters who have stolen millions, but he is also pardoning the court requirement to repay the ill gotten gain. Milton got to keep the $600m of embezzled funds.
Oyer is critical of Biden for pardoning his family, but in the light of Comey, it would seem to have been expedient.
Oyer was sacked because she refused to "advise" Pam Bondi to rescind Mel Gibson's ban on carrying firearms after his domestic abuse conviction had resulted in a ban. After she left the ban was lifted.
This is not normal.
To be clear, not new news. This has been clear since the first round of pardons right at the beginning of the year
Yesterday, for my birthday, my daughter had managed to get a copy of my late dad winning an episode of 15-1. She had also got digitised some early videos of our family from 1997 at the time her sister was born. In these pictures was my wife. Very different hair and glasses. I was also there and roughly half the man I am now. One of us has aged spectacularly, actually looks much better and sexier now. The other needs to get back to the gym.
A suggestion for late middle age - take up a sport that you can keep doing to an old age. One that requires flexibility in the body, as much as strength. The social aspect of the sport is good for the mind as well - it can get you meeting people different to your usual friendship groups.
I took up rowing - you can see some crazy ancient people sculling on the Tideway. One chap who passes regularly on a sunny Sunday morning has got to be in his late 70s. There are categories for *racing* where the average age in the boat is 86…
One friend has taken up fencing - which again has people participating/competing successfully to suprising ages.
Thinking you are "Happily married" can be dangerous. An acquaintance of mine thought he was very happily married for years. They raised a family together, had nice holidays, and bought nice things. They had a pleasant middle-class life, living in the countryside.
The day after their youngest son left home to go to university, his wife said she was leaving him. She had been planning it for a couple of years, and had been renting a flat for six months, slowly moving her essentials in. He had seen no warning signs, and he is convinced that there was no other man involved. She had just grown out of love with him. Last time I spoke to him, they are still friends, but years later (and he is with another lady now), he is still in shock.
The worst thing is that the kids split over it as well: some disliked the way their mum had acted, and another backed her. AIUI although he and his ex are friendly, the kids are not.
TBF, I don't know her, and I've only got his side of the story.
Very fair comment, and indeed our daughter has just divorced her husband of 26 years with their children 22 and 16 joining her in her new home
However, after 61 years I affirm we have had very happy marriage
People are sick of the "process state". That's why Farage is heading for no 10.
People won't like it better when it is a process-free state, with Farage signing off executive orders like a down market Trump.
The point is that the modern Process State is straight out of James Burnham.
Its priority is the process, the people are fodder to be fed to it. It is inhumane in the deepest sense.
The latest idea, to commoditise The Headcount and sell their lives to Peter Thiel, is more of the same.
Reform being a shower of shit and not the answer, doesn’t change that.
I know its a bit of an obsession of yours, but what is the alternative to a state that follows a process?
It seems to me the alternative is a state that makes capricious decisions, without a process. It sounds like a recipie for corruption and cronyism, with politicians bunging contracts to their mates, over-riding legal objections and arbitrary actions. In short it sounds like tyranny.
The purpose of the state is to serve the people.
Not the state to have the people served to it, for consumption.
Consider the Post Office - according to high officials, they were forced to prosecute the SPMs on grounds they (the HOs) knew to be spurious. They were forced to lie in court. They were forced to take bonuses - paid for in part by money extorted from the innocent.
That’s your Process State.
I understand that some have done well out it.
The Process needs humility, compassion & decency. The goal is the people, not the Process.
Perhaps that is hard to understand. It is very simple - no linear rule set can define the human condition. We are too complex. Therefore we must always have human judgement in the rules.
Computer Says No - that’s your tyranny.
But the opposite -- too much autonomy and no process -- is a recipe for corruption. So, how do we find the balance?
A good start would be to impose real punishments, for incompetence, dishonesty, and failure.
The New Statesman has some very interesting infirmation on the influence of Larry Ellison on the Blair Institute's push for digital I.D., of which more a bit later.
It's looking more and more obvious that the entire digital I.D. scheme is the fruit of the combined influence of Ellison on Blair, and Thiel on Starmer.
Here's Larry Ellison, speaking just today in Dubai :
:"Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison today proposed unifying citizen data including health records, finances, and voting history into databases to enable AI applications in public services like fraud detection and resource allocation."
"Voting history" - that's the secrecy of the ballot ended right there.
People are sick of the "process state". That's why Farage is heading for no 10.
People won't like it better when it is a process-free state, with Farage signing off executive orders like a down market Trump.
The point is that the modern Process State is straight out of James Burnham.
Its priority is the process, the people are fodder to be fed to it. It is inhumane in the deepest sense.
The latest idea, to commoditise The Headcount and sell their lives to Peter Thiel, is more of the same.
Reform being a shower of shit and not the answer, doesn’t change that.
I know its a bit of an obsession of yours, but what is the alternative to a state that follows a process?
It seems to me the alternative is a state that makes capricious decisions, without a process. It sounds like a recipie for corruption and cronyism, with politicians bunging contracts to their mates, over-riding legal objections and arbitrary actions. In short it sounds like tyranny.
Process is important. But not as important as doing the right thing. If the process gets in the way of the right thing then it is flawed and should be amended.
For example: the delays to paying out compensation where the state has been found to have failed (blood infections; post office).
Sure, but that is just about adjusting the process, not getting rid of it.
Of course process should be democratically accountable, and compliant with the law. So it is perfectly within the remit of a process state to pay out over the Post Office and blood scandals. The problem is that the government (and previous ones) haven't budgeted the funds, not that the system is unwilling.
If the funds weren't budgeted, it proves that the system was very definitely unwilling.
People are sick of the "process state". That's why Farage is heading for no 10.
People won't like it better when it is a process-free state, with Farage signing off executive orders like a down market Trump.
The point is that the modern Process State is straight out of James Burnham.
Its priority is the process, the people are fodder to be fed to it. It is inhumane in the deepest sense.
The latest idea, to commoditise The Headcount and sell their lives to Peter Thiel, is more of the same.
Reform being a shower of shit and not the answer, doesn’t change that.
I know its a bit of an obsession of yours, but what is the alternative to a state that follows a process?
It seems to me the alternative is a state that makes capricious decisions, without a process. It sounds like a recipie for corruption and cronyism, with politicians bunging contracts to their mates, over-riding legal objections and arbitrary actions. In short it sounds like tyranny.
The purpose of the state is to serve the people.
Not the state to have the people served to it, for consumption.
Consider the Post Office - according to high officials, they were forced to prosecute the SPMs on grounds they (the HOs) knew to be spurious. They were forced to lie in court. They were forced to take bonuses - paid for in part by money extorted from the innocent.
That’s your Process State.
I understand that some have done well out it.
The Process needs humility, compassion & decency. The goal is the people, not the Process.
Perhaps that is hard to understand. It is very simple - no linear rule set can define the human condition. We are too complex. Therefore we must always have human judgement in the rules.
Computer Says No - that’s your tyranny.
But the opposite -- too much autonomy and no process -- is a recipe for corruption. So, how do we find the balance?
A good start would be to impose real punishments, for incompetence, dishonesty, and failure.
The New Statesman has some very interesting infirmation on the influence of Larry Ellison on the Blair Institute's push for digital I.D., of which more a bit later.
It's looking more and more obvious that the entire digital I.D. scheme is the fruit of the combined influence of Ellison on Blair, and Thiel on Starmer.
Here's Larry Ellison, speaking just today in Dubai :
:"Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison today proposed unifying citizen data including health records, finances, and voting history into databases to enable AI applications in public services like fraud detection and resource allocation."
"Voting history" - that's the secrecy of the ballot ended right there.
People are sick of the "process state". That's why Farage is heading for no 10.
People won't like it better when it is a process-free state, with Farage signing off executive orders like a down market Trump.
The point is that the modern Process State is straight out of James Burnham.
Its priority is the process, the people are fodder to be fed to it. It is inhumane in the deepest sense.
The latest idea, to commoditise The Headcount and sell their lives to Peter Thiel, is more of the same.
Reform being a shower of shit and not the answer, doesn’t change that.
I know its a bit of an obsession of yours, but what is the alternative to a state that follows a process?
It seems to me the alternative is a state that makes capricious decisions, without a process. It sounds like a recipie for corruption and cronyism, with politicians bunging contracts to their mates, over-riding legal objections and arbitrary actions. In short it sounds like tyranny.
Process is important. But not as important as doing the right thing. If the process gets in the way of the right thing then it is flawed and should be amended.
For example: the delays to paying out compensation where the state has been found to have failed (blood infections; post office).
Sure, but that is just about adjusting the process, not getting rid of it.
Of course process should be democratically accountable, and compliant with the law. So it is perfectly within the remit of a process state to pay out over the Post Office and blood scandals. The problem is that the government (and previous ones) haven't budgeted the funds, not that the system is unwilling.
If the funds weren't budgeted, it proves that the system was very definitely unwilling.
Surely the funds weren't budgeted because the political part of the system knew full well that it would have borked their fiscal plans?
Thinking you are "Happily married" can be dangerous. An acquaintance of mine thought he was very happily married for years. They raised a family together, had nice holidays, and bought nice things. They had a pleasant middle-class life, living in the countryside.
The day after their youngest son left home to go to university, his wife said she was leaving him. She had been planning it for a couple of years, and had been renting a flat for six months, slowly moving her essentials in. He had seen no warning signs, and he is convinced that there was no other man involved. She had just grown out of love with him. Last time I spoke to him, they are still friends, but years later (and he is with another lady now), he is still in shock.
The worst thing is that the kids split over it as well: some disliked the way their mum had acted, and another backed her. AIUI although he and his ex are friendly, the kids are not.
TBF, I don't know her, and I've only got his side of the story.
You imply the wife did something wrong.
There can be a myriad of reasons the wife fell out of love, not all of them are perhaps down to her implied selfishness. The fact that the split was not amicable (despit your friend's assertion that it was) and dragged the children into the fray might say more about the husband than the wife. He seems to couch the split in terms of despite him being unceremoniously and unreasonably dumped upon he was man enough to remain grown up and businesslike. It reads like he was pissed off because he lost control.
She seems calm and in control and I suspect that really annoyed him. How can he regain control after the event? Make the children pick sides.
I don't think I implied any such thing; and I said at the end that I've only got his side of the story. Which is all I've got to go on.
Comments
He has a chance today of winning all his matches (5 points) which would be incredible. I think only 5 players have achieved a perfect score since the cup started in 1927.
He's now 70 with bf for SPOTY and could shorten further if he wins today.
Only joking I am sure you have self awareness hitherto not demonstrated on here this morning.
And combined with that, I don't think men have adapted that well to this change and particularly in they are re-entering the dating pool in middle aged. Then through in the dating app where there is always another option to try around the corner, and average women get a lot more matches than average men.
I find these stories quite pathetic in that he wasn't in government when he did this, anybody with half a brain looks at the rules and asks what is the most sensible decision going forward and he was a bloody lawyer, lawyers doing lawyer things. Very few people ask what is the maximum tax I can pay.
Are we twinned with Gilead?
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1972214748994588814
Even when he is trying to sound tough, he spends minutes going off all over the place and manages to drop in things like blaming climate change for illegal migration....Reform UK are just going to clip the hell out of that.
“Picasso was a stickler for a morning ritual. “A litany that had to be repeated every day,” Gilot wrote. “He always woke up submerged in pessimism . . . Then he would groan and begin his lamentations. ‘I wonder, really, why I bother to get up. Why should I paint? . . . A life like mine is unbearable.’ . . . By two o’clock he thought of only one thing: to get down to painting. At two in the morning he was fresh as a rose. But the next morning it would begin all over again.”
Picasso painted at night, he told her, because when spotlit in the darkness, everything but the picture’s surface fell away in shadow and “the painter becomes hypnotised by his own work”. The habit stretched back to Montmartre, where his first great love and muse Fernande Olivier observed that “the total silence and the calm [at night] . . . encouraged inspiration” and that visitors unaware of his habits who woke him up in the morning were subjected to “violent and often foul language”.”
Picasso was very like me. I wonder if he ever considered that. Woke up in the 1930s while painting Guernica and thought “I’m really similar to that dude LEONDAMUS off of PB 90 years in the future”
I bet he did. Smart guy
My personal view is that, if he did, this wasn't tax avoidance - because the tax outcome he achieved was the same as if he'd owned the field himself but let his parents use it. However there is no single legal definition of "tax avoidance", and others may disagree.
https://bsky.app/profile/danneidle.bsky.social/post/3lzuxvngxcw2s
But it fills the pages and keeps the outrage fire burning just as well as a proper scandal.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/nov/23/keir-starmer-attacks-weak-rishi-sunak-over-non-dom-tax-breaks
Incompetence aside (name me the last competent Prime Minister) Starmer is guilty of demanding a second Referendum and bringing down Boris Johnson, when poor Boris was merely eating his birthday cake whilst Starmer was partying up in Durham.
He would be a good Attorney General, but PM is a step too far and even his own membership know it
NEW THREAD
If I was young I'd be interested in women who were OK looking and no larger than a size 12. That's it.
But then again I wouldn't be expecting to alight on someone at first shot who ticks all the boxes upfront like these women seem to do with their array of filters. They don't want to engage with the real-life messy business.
Then again, I hate social media so what do I know.
Winona Hawkins: Raylan. Well, you do a good job of hiding it, and I suppose most folks don't see it, but honestly, you're the angriest man I have ever known.
I took up rowing - you can see some crazy ancient people sculling on the Tideway. One chap who passes regularly on a sunny Sunday morning has got to be in his late 70s. There are categories for *racing* where the average age in the boat is 86…
One friend has taken up fencing - which again has people participating/competing successfully to suprising ages.
The secret of a happy marriage