A white elephant at Folkestone. Might get a couple of years' use max if Frontex gets its EES working before Burnham re-establishes free movement of labour....
Edward Barrow
@ejoftheweb.bsky.social
Part-time Londoner: woke liberal socialist, empiricist. Likes food, dancing, gardening, interested in politics, economics, environment. Likely to block bigots and denialists of any stripe; will block crypto bros etc. Signal: ejoftheweb-57
London and the huge diversity of Londoners who make London the best city in the world. It's cleaner and safer than ever, less pollution, fewer accidents, less crime.
Michael Druker 🇨🇦@mdruker.app · 2d agoSocial media loves talking about how everything is getting worse. But what’s something that you’ve seen get _better_ in your lifetime?
Return GWR train from Evesham just cancelled. No warning. No notification in the app or by email. Applying for Delay repay is tortuous. This is what GBR should be sorting first. Train co apps are such a scam.
The GWR train I am on has just been held up for a good quarter of an hour by the King's swans on the line.
Britons should use money we haven't got to buy food the country doesn't grow, store it in homes that don't exist, in spare rooms that got taxed away, so we can survive when reservoirs nobody built run dry because of a climate the govt won't protect. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Every Briton should stockpile water and food supplies, government advises
Be Ready campaign aims to prepare UK for impact of climate crisis, technological dependency and threats by hostile state
theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026... Dumb idea from Haldane. It's within-country tariffs. High streets need to move beyond shopping and become cool places to hang out. Nothing wrong with coffee shops IMO.
Tax online sales more heavily to save high streets, Burnham urged
Exclusive: British Chambers of Commerce president calls for overhaul of business rates and greater powers for local leaders
theguardian.com
It's mildly disconcerting for a person of my age to keep reading about a Labour Chancellor facing fiscal challenges called Healey..
To much local horror, a Gail's has opened next to the tube station in Brixton. Starbucks failed in the same spot, as (unsurprisingly) did Chosen Noodles. As well as boycotting, we'll be trying to help the BFAWU recruit Gail's staff. Fuck Bain Capital and all who sail in her.
It is completely fucking ridiculous that golf courses in areas in severe drought get an exemption from water restrictions. They're mostly grass and grass is very drought tolerant. It goes brown, sure, but is back to verdant just days after rain.
Bring on Schengen asap. 3 separate passport checks to cross a simple border is such a waste of time and resources. Taking over an hour on a quiet day thanks to Border Force faffing and dawdling. So stupid.
The Turing test itself, and its mindset, are incredibly off base. Mimicry is being sold as the thing it is mimicking. It is not. Never will be. The entire statistic nature of LLMs and inference in general will never, by definition, be intelligent because it doesn't comprehend rules, only patterns.
The Home Office is not competent to make such decisions. The FCO should be involved. At least they'd be able to tell them a little bit about what continuous evil the Eritrean tyranny perpetrates on its citizens. #AbolishtheHomeOffice
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w agoUK threatens to ban Eritreans over returns policy
Now here is a point I do broadly agree with, as it happens. A lot less effort should be expended on trying to prove Russia Dun It, and a lot more effort should be spent asking Brexiteers why Putin supported it
I want to see empty exhibits in British museums, that contain only the story about what they once contained, and why they had to be sent home. The space would be no less profound for me www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Oxford ceremony marks return home of kiwi feather cloak
The kahu kiwi, given to a British doctor in 1900, was "crying to come home", Māori campaigners say.
bbc.co.uk
When I first heard about AI being used for menus and advertisements, my concern was largely that it would be used to idealize the food and make it look better than it actually was. At no point did I imagine that restaurants would willingly put out horrific looking images of their food on purpose
This comparison is telling about the BBC's editorial priorities. But it's also telling about the media's incomprehension of the Green Party of England and Wales. We are, and we always will be, much more than just the leader. The same cannot be said of Reform. 1/...
Media Tell The Truth@mediatellthetruth.bsky.social · 2w agoNumber of times Nigel Farage lost Westminster elections before becoming an MP: 7 Number of times the BBC called for him to quit: zero.
Attlee and Thatcher were right about referendums. Labour held the first to resolve its own internal differences on Europe; the Tories the last for the same reason.
No referendum . We have a parliamentary democracy . If a party has Rejoin in their manifesto , & goes on to win a GE , then we can rejoin . That is how our system works .
I'm sorry if this is obvious but the Tory proposal to exempt family homes completely from IHT will lead to 1] pensioners buying the biggest houses they possibly can 2] pensioners refusing to downsize which can only be bad news for younger families trying to buy family homes
Thankfully the Tories won't get in. But this is such a dumb policy. We should encourage empty nesters to downsize. For lots of reasons. Not penalise them for doing so.
Dan Neidle@danneidle.bsky.social · 2w agoToday, selling a £1m house and moving to a £400,000 flat won’t change your children’s IHT. The estate is the same size. Under the Tory proposal, the £1m house was exempt from IHT, but the £600,000 you released is fully subject to IHT. Your house move caused £240,000 IHT.
I rather ENJOY reading books rather than reading being some dull task I’d like AI to do. Now if AI could vacuum our cluttered tiny place with awkward stairs; lift up and down all the shoes 👞 and things, and vacuum under them back tidier… and empty itself with no dust.. and sell stuff on Vinted..
The Tories have had over two years to come up with a broad set of new policies and they've reverted to their same old mean spirited small minded ones they have had for decades. More austerity and the type of deregulation that led to Grenfell.
One word beginning with R - is it a new even more boring Radio 4 programme or a new even more fascist political party? You never know these days...
The Green motion is an abject failure for so many reason but it is also exactly how online debate styles transfer to real political spaces. We're increasingly in times where everything is black or white and everything in between is a screaming match that takes the entire progressive movement down.
Of all the various Sunday morning substitutes for @cerysmatthews.bsky.social, Bobby Friction is the only one to keep me listening. Great stuff, and I shall certainly be following up The Excise Department...
AI artslop is definitely evolving. The giveaways used to be weird or additional body parts. Now it's that focus thing, where the whole image is in impossible focus, unconstrained by any depth of field.
Okaay. It wasn't that long ago that I read that America had ordered more chips than it had datacentres to put them in (or energy to power them). Supply and demand leading and lagging, nothing unusual here, as you were.
The Register@theregister.com · 4w agoAmerica is planning more AI datacenters than its chip supply can fill
I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility
See also NYC. And even London and Paris.
Musa Okwonga@okwonga.bsky.social · last mo.The mayoral discourse in Berlin continues to be *utterly* unhinged. If the AfD had topped the polls the narrative would be “finally the people have been heard!” but since the Left won, it’s all “Queer Islamofascists and Woke are trying to conquer us with, er, affordable rents!”