Dan Hatton

Voltaire said it's for the best
Better not put it to the test
Jack Daniels
I didn't buy
After I promised, now I feel like dying

pronouns: he/him

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only_ohm_at_mas.to@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqsy5czl6qsl76l9v92wa5qwee8elr5dr5l9t270vvg0vv0mfx4cfvsprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntjffqpa

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relay.momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-06-15 09:10:05 UTC

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I think ministers now have a power to do this by statutory instrument, so they can basically go ahead and do it instantly and without giving the slightest thought to the consequences.

2026-06-06 18:20:06 UTC

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Just checking, though: when Louis Armstrong (or Johnnie Ray) says "you coax the blues right out of the horn", they're not talking about either of these instruments, right?

2026-04-10 08:30:39 UTC

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And would that be the final straw that leads the unions to go looking for a better party to give their political fund money to?

2026-04-08 17:50:03 UTC

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Is it formally outside the peace deal? I guess there is no "text of the deal" to refer to, but the tweet from the Prime Minister of Pakistan announcing the deal says "the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, *along with their allies*, have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere *including Lebanon and elsewhere*" (my italics). <https://x.com/CMShehbaz/status/2041665043423752651>.

2026-04-05 14:14:26 UTC

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Brtish governments were never shy of complaining bitterly about EU regulations that they themselves had voted in favour of in the Council of Ministers, were they?

2026-04-04 11:10:56 UTC

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As the old saying goes, conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: that there should be an in-group whom the law protects but does not bind, and an out-group whom the law binds but does not protect. I suggest fascism is what happens when conservatives become confident enough to proceed without bothering to pretend there's still a meaningful rule of law.

2026-04-01 11:09:45 UTC

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Perhaps I'm missing something, but how would they justify pulling Scott Mills' eps without also pulling John Peel's, against whom the evidence of offending appears somewhat stronger?

2026-03-27 19:22:55 UTC

Rather direct interpretive dance choice for "got to go down" there. #TOTP #1999Watch

2026-03-26 17:51:47 UTC

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In fact, in one of the eps I remember best, Mac removed the trigger from a gun and used it as a spanner, which I'd imagine *really*, *really* offended the NRA.

2026-03-25 21:04:25 UTC

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My understanding, FWIW, is that there is no such law currently on the UK statute book, nor imminently about to be on the UK statute book, and Apple are simply lying when they say UK law requires it.

2026-03-20 13:53:42 UTC

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Having worked in climate-adjacent research for a while, I'm aware that there absolutely are such things as vexatious and frivolous FoI requests, and that they are a real problem, but I don't suppose those are the ones the government will attempt to limit.
(Also, quite a lot of FoI requests are submitted by employees inside the responder organisations, trying to get the management information they need to do their jobs properly, which indicates a whole other problem.)

2026-03-13 16:08:52 UTC

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Love the way the compilers of the list couldn't bring themselves to use the word "Gimp".

2026-03-11 17:42:12 UTC

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The article says "by a narrow margin". I rather fear that, if the UK were still part of the EU, the vote would have gone the other way.

2026-03-02 13:26:10 UTC

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I vaguely remember that WTO rules now allow importer states to apply a "carbon tariff" on imported goods to equalize the total carbon tax paid between imported goods and domestically-produced goods, no? But I suspect that the UK doesn't have a clearly-identifiable enough domestic carbon tax to take advantage of that.

2026-02-22 20:52:47 UTC

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The counter-argument to that is that, once the whole policy package becomes public, it's an immutable fait accompli, so if you want the discussion to make any difference, it has to happen before that.

2026-02-19 12:46:19 UTC

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Let's be honest, councils are in financial trouble because central government has cut their block grants to the bone, banned them from raising council tax beyond 5% pa, and loaded them up with expensive statutory duties that can't possibly be satisfied within the resulting budgetary constraints - it's nothing to do with which party happens to hold the majority locally.

2026-02-15 12:00:04 UTC

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I'm certainly not one of the "thin out the numbers of universities" mob - I suggested the consultancy/lobbying route as a pick-me-up, not as a put-me-down.

2026-02-15 10:56:32 UTC

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My most minority-of-one opinion: the English and Welsh universities should have seen the writing on the wall in 2011 and pivoted away from teaching and research to focus largely on consultancy and lobbying. Instead, a bunch of innumerate managers decided that they could achieve break-even or revenue surplus if they increased student numbers enough under the new fees regime, which always flew in the face of basic arithmetic.

2026-02-13 11:48:33 UTC

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Sounds remarkably similar to Will Hutton's prescription from 1995.

2026-02-12 13:09:52 UTC

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Oof. OTOH, I've currently got an old laptop that sits in my spare bedroom connecting to a cloud storage service to do an offsite data backup, and when I had a quick look at the progress monitor this morning, it was giving an estimated time remaining of 10^13 days, which is about 20 times the age of the universe. (It's now dropped to 1 hour 50 minutes, so I think the main thing we learn is not to rely on the estimated time remaining calculation.)

2026-02-11 12:35:45 UTC

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Are you claiming that your use of the word "begging" in your original post was consistent with the precise legal definition that applies in your home jurisdiction? Feel free to answer either on the basis of the natural and ordinary meaning of domestic legislation, or on the basis of that meaning as modulated by the Strasbourg jurisprudence.

2026-02-09 13:48:51 UTC

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Assuming the current outbreak of fascism in the US won't last forever, in any case I think we need to ditch the idea that executives doing lots of in-person interccontinental travel is essential to trade and prosperity, because there's no way we can meet our climate goals without dramatically resucing the amount of aviation that goes on.

2026-02-06 19:50:14 UTC

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Ah, here it is:
'Ford flipped the switch which he saw was marked "Mode Execute Ready" instead of the now old-fashioned "Access Standby" that had so long ago replaced the appallingly stone-aged "Off." '

2026-02-06 19:47:01 UTC

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What was it Douglas Adams said about "standby"?
#TOTP #1999Watch

2026-02-06 17:24:28 UTC

I've been on here for a while, but in this new era of having my real name as my display name, it's finally time to write an #introduction post. I spend most of my time being a full-time #carer for an unwell member of my family. Before that, I was a lecturer in mechanical and marine #engineering at #PlymouthUniversity, and before that a postdoc researching various bits of #environmentalPhysics and #engineeringFluidMechanics at the #UniversityOfCambridge and #UniversityCollegeLondon...
1/3

2026-01-30 20:26:09 UTC

Hands, Read! #TOTP #1979Watch

2026-01-29 09:25:16 UTC

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Or indeed the manufacturer-provided keyboard app.

2026-01-19 22:28:55 UTC

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I don't know: do Ensemble now get to claim the credit when (not if) the policy actually makes life better for people?

2026-01-09 12:38:25 UTC

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Bloody hell. You'd think if anyone would have respect for the evidentiary dangers of forging images, it'd be history buffs, but apparently not.

2026-01-02 21:54:41 UTC

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The "other sources" possibly being the previous week's episode, as @npub178a…5e34 suggests.

2025-12-28 16:10:49 UTC

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I don't think much of a portion of that revenue finds its way to publishers' employees.

2025-12-19 21:04:53 UTC

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Upper limits or lower limits? #TOTP

2025-12-19 21:02:13 UTC

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I wonder how many of the regulars on here would be outed as former audience members? #TOTP

2025-12-02 16:15:43 UTC

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@npub1xw9…75ln
My impression is that LineageOS will run on a wider range of devices than GrapheneOS, but it may have other drawbacks (?something to do with how it provides the functionality that Android gets from Google Play Services).
But frankly, handsets that will run either GrapheneOS or LineageOS seem to be remarkably difficult to find available for purchase, whether new or refurb. Any leads on where it's possible to buy one in the UK, please?

2025-12-02 10:04:35 UTC

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I'd say its greatest failure is inherent in its terms of reference: that it measures the budget deficit by the rate of change of public sector net debt, not by (minus) the rate of change of public sector net worth, thus strongly disincentivizing any public-sector investment.

2025-11-30 14:06:10 UTC

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... Some of those limits take the form "in order to wield power, you must go through a proper formal procedure"; some take the form "no matter how proper your procedure, there are certain basic human rights you're not allowed to breach". I think in this case, I'd argue that the Home Secretary overstepped both the limits of the first kind set out in the Terrorism Act 2000, and the limits of the second kind set out in the Human Rights Act 1998.

2025-11-30 14:02:15 UTC

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@npub12pw…zvxn
Democracy isn't "if you're sufficiently good at winning elections you can do anything you like"; it always has to be underpinned by the rule of law: the principle that no matter how strong an electoral mandate you have, there are some limits on the power you can wield...

2025-11-28 19:37:34 UTC

Yay Billie! Since last week's #TOTP fest, we've had much hand-wringing over an AI fake image of you at a TV shoot with Paul McGann. And getting back to the #misogyny, as is the wont of AI image generators, it had substantially shortened the skirt of your last-seen on-screen costume. #1998Watch #DoctorWho

2025-11-17 09:53:02 UTC

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@npub17tv…q7ve
The Guardian is behind a pay-one-way-or-another-wall: either you accept analytics and targeted advertising cookies, or you pay a fee to reject them.

2025-09-29 08:10:47 UTC

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Where the text of legislation is ambiguous, the courts will sometimes (albeit rarely) take account of the statements in Parliament of the sponsoring minister when they decide how to interpret that legislation.

2025-09-28 11:32:36 UTC

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Hmm... I wonder if new towns founded properly, along Ebenezer Howard's garden city principles, could actually themselves be a vehicle for reshaping the financial services sector in service of the public good: garden city LAs as universal landlords of commercial property in their areas choosing which banks get premises based on those banks' service to the public.

2025-09-26 09:03:28 UTC

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That will be a decision for the court, not for the Home Office: see <https://theconversation.com/palestine-action-arrests-what-happens-next-and-what-it-tells-us-about-the-breadth-of-britains-counter-terrorism-laws-263080>.

2025-09-25 10:47:39 UTC

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Ideal in the workplace.

2025-08-28 14:02:22 UTC

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What's unusual this time is that polling projections indicate that PR for the next general election is clearly in the self-interest of the party in government. I think that's only ever been the case once before (lead-up to 1997). Eventually, Labour are going to get into enough of a panic to do it; the question is whether they leave that moment too late to invoke section 2 of the Parliament Act and override any objections in the Lords.

2025-08-28 13:42:43 UTC

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I use that weird archaic wording precisely because there is a precedent for it already on the statute book, so if I'm "compromising the sovereignty of Parliament", it's already compromised and has been for nearly 500 years.

2025-08-28 13:01:37 UTC

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2 Insert an anti-repeal clause in the Human Rights Act, modelled on the one in the Treason Act 1540: "It shall be high treason for any person, by word or by deed, to procure or do any thing to the repeal of this Act" (you'd probably need similar clauses to prevent amending or disapplying the HRA, too).
I think, though, a lot of the problem is that the present PM is himself an instinctive authoritarian and doesn't actually *want* to stop the UK's lurch towards fascism.

2025-08-28 12:57:27 UTC

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To be clear, there are two things the present government *could* do to reduce the risks:
1 Introduce a PR system for Westminster elections. There's no way Reform are getting near an overall majority on a PR basis (and even Reform+Tory combined are looking like falling somewhat short, although a Reform+Labour coalition is a risk we can't entirely ignore, and would quite likely have a majority under PR).

2025-08-08 09:28:25 UTC

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Also: is that "followed all legal rules currently in force", or "followed all legal rules the govt is currently legislating in the Renters' Rights Bill"? Because I have a feeling she may not have done the latter.

2025-08-04 10:54:46 UTC

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The discounts weren't (at least routinely) enough to drive the sale price below the replacement build cost, though, were they?

2025-08-04 08:12:34 UTC

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I think I might argue that it wasn't RtB per se that worsened the housing crisis, but the refusal to allow the capital receipts from RtB to be used to build new council houses.

2025-08-03 11:12:16 UTC

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It's well over a decade since I attempted in-person record shopping in Cambridge, but a quick web search reveals a few outlets, most of which appear to be still-extant within the last year *and* to open on Sundays - The Cherry Pit on King Street, Reliable Record Cafe on Mill Road, Fopp on Sidney Street, Lost in Vinyl on Magdalene Street, Pete's Music stall on the Market (that last one probably not Sundays).

2025-07-31 12:35:50 UTC

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Under-recruitment of language teachers in turn perhaps being related to the decision to scrap compulsory selection of at least one modern foreign language at GCSE now being long enough ago that pupils affected by it are old enough to be becoming teachers.

2025-07-31 11:48:04 UTC

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The main difficulty, at least for me, is in detecting whether or not the phone is successfully squared off in the first stage - and if you don't know whether it's squared off, you might as well tilt and roll it because it's as likely to make the squareness better as it is to make it worse. Maybe easier to square it up in software after taking the photo: GIMP has a 3D transform tool that will do it?

2025-07-09 21:11:43 UTC

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I think, when it comes to protection of basic human rights, it's a mistake to try and "navigate the current debates" - the aim has to be to place them beyond debate. I've suggested before inserting an anti-repeal clause in the Human Rights Act, mirroring the one in the Treason Act 1540: "It shall be high treason for any person, by word or by deed, to procure or do any thing to the repeal of this Act".

2025-07-02 19:22:54 UTC

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LibDems abstained: mostly by the "did not vote" method, six of them by the "walk through both lobbies" method.

2025-06-29 07:58:11 UTC

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AIUI the proscription requires an affirmative resolution of each house of Parliament to proceed, so we'll at least be able to see which way they vote.

2025-06-22 16:59:32 UTC

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Also allow Covid to run rampant so Long Covid renders an ever-increasing portion of the population unfit for military service.

2024-12-23 18:58:46 UTC

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Right, but... if I were a BoE spokesperson and I said, "no no, our plan was to suppress growth only to a point just short of recession, but we were blindsided by a sudden and unexpected fiscal tightening by the Treasury", could you easily refute that argument?

2024-12-15 12:09:08 UTC

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@npub12pw…zvxn
Slightly tangential to the main point of the thread, but a key flaw in the "have a Bluesky account as well as your account in the Fediverse" plan is that then you have to agree to Bluesky's terms of service, which are really quite invasive - ironically, more invasive than Twitter's.

2024-12-10 10:43:05 UTC

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It's worse than that: having this attitude means UK ministers are forced to hope for the election of governments in EU countries that will be willing to separate the four freedoms, and allow full access to sell stuff into the single market without regulatory harmonization/ECJ jurisdiction/freedom of movement - which means the far right.

2024-12-08 17:50:17 UTC

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Or (c) Build a different coalition of voters that makes it possible to win without the support of voters who have dipped their hands in the blood of racist causes and racist candidates. Here in the UK, the window for doing that is getting very narrow indeed, but I think it might be a bit wider in the US.

2024-12-06 16:15:03 UTC

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Oh, you think there'll be functioning law courts in your dotage do you?

2024-11-01 13:24:19 UTC

Just ordered a new mobile phone handset because my old one had undergone total functionality failure. For the second consecutive such occasion, I thought I might quite fancy LineageOS. And for the second consecutive such occasion, I found there was no overlap whatsover between the models on LineageOS's supported devices list and the models that are available to purchase. By way of postmortem, is that normal? #foss #openSource

2024-10-22 12:16:20 UTC

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Of course, I had to check to see if I could do that. I can't, and now I have a stitch.