rob

If anybody wants to know a few things about me

#UK - born in the NHS at 312ppm.
#Hedgehogs
#LiberalDemocrat
#WalterPresents
#CognitiveTrailTheory
#CovidIsNotOver
#Nightwish
#Springsteen
#ActuallyImReallyQuiteBoring

Profile pic is me with my fluffy sheep Ruffles. Header is about a hundred sheep who decided to form a ring on the downs one day. I'm not that interested in sheep, really.

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Last Notes

2026-03-22 10:30:14 UTC

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I'd be interested to see examples of that happening. (Some of the claims made in the article about trusts reducing waiting lists seem unlikely, so I'd like to know more about what really happened there too.)

2026-03-20 12:07:23 UTC

Currently reading Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
"[X and Y] are more interesting questions, but concerning these I have nothing especially interesting to say."
If only all philosophers were this self aware. #philosophy

2026-03-19 14:47:13 UTC

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2/2 (not their feelings about it, but their actual reality) that it is useless as a concept. You can argue whether "trust" is the right word to use; my point is that the benefits of growth in GDP are so unequally distributed that for most people it is a meaningless measure.

2026-03-19 14:46:54 UTC

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I was going to leave this because I feared we'd get into a morass of linguistic philosophy, but I couldn't help myself, so... While there is clearly a technical meaning in which the term "GDP" can be deemed trustworthy, that meaning is very rarely deployed. In common commentary the dominant meaning is GPD-has-gone-up-therefore-everybody-is-better-off, and that is so at odds with people's actual experience 1/2

2026-03-19 09:59:50 UTC

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"people's distrust of GDP" - is it not actually objective experience, that for many people GPD does not measure their own circumstances due to increased inequality, which GDP takes no account of? That is to say, the issue is not that people don't trust GDP, it is that GDP is untrustworthy.

2026-03-05 16:37:30 UTC

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to be fair, a lot of people think that, but I think there are quite a few in amongst them who know how to kowtow while following their own more calculating plans in relative privacy. I am certain that Trump and those who are there only because of sycophancy were incapable of the detailed and purposeful planning required for the assault on Iran.

2026-03-05 12:42:54 UTC

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2/2 his view of "US leadership of the world economy" doesn't extend beyond this moment of being able to throw is toys at a weaker country. Some in his administration may have a longer and more intelligent, even if rapacious view, but they will be powerless to change course when the Commander in Chief decides to walk away.

2026-03-05 12:41:16 UTC

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"Trump" as a shorthand for "US government" sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. In this case "Trump seems intent on trashing..." I doubt that is the case, although it may be for the more calculating of his supporters. The truest thing I've read (I can't remember where, maybe the Economist) is that Trump wants a big win ie he'll use the USA's firepower to trash Iran and then simply walk away in a week or two's time, not caring that others have to clear up the mess. 1/2

2026-02-27 19:02:19 UTC

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I bet my violin is smaller than yours. 😎

2026-02-19 17:19:46 UTC

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I am in the middle of a similar process, though I'm taking longer over it. I know of no process other then doing them one by one. So, each time I get an email from one of them, I go into the account and change it. Flow to gmail is already much slower than it was.

2026-01-26 14:29:20 UTC

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I already got one person to switch, which is a real triumph, given what they're like. Worth at least two other people, I reckon. 😉

2026-01-26 14:02:35 UTC

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I decided to move to #Linux when it became apparent what Windows 11 was about. There are some minor inconveniences, but I haven't looked back. And my laptops are so much faster.

2026-01-11 17:18:29 UTC

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I wonder how many of them have stopped and asked themselves what he would need the money for. He's still got his life and limbs, he's got a massive bureaucracy behind him that will stump up for any (let's face it, unlikely) legal charges. What desperate need does he have that they think they are providing for?

2025-12-27 11:10:16 UTC

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Em dash is the last resort. When a party of writers, grammarians, librarians, proof readers, historians, Trappists and philologists has fallen silent, just say "em dash". Several hours later the house will be trashed, several guests will be in hospital, riots will have spread through the neighbourhood and the police will have called in special forces to deal with the last proof reader holding out on the roof top.
Or, check Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#Em_dash

2025-10-24 18:38:02 UTC

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I'd be surprised if they did not have provision for work experience, so by definition a volunteer policy.

2025-09-03 09:30:05 UTC

"As a consultant nurse and psychotherapist who has worked extensively in both schools and prisons and mental health services, I cannot ignore the institutional similarities: rigid timetables, enforced conformity and the pervasive use of shame as a behavioural tool." Ouch. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/sep/02/our-outdated-education-system-feels-viscerally-wrong #UKPolitics

2025-08-30 16:48:13 UTC

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when you say "on terms that wold be a very difficult sell in the UK", there is no evidence that in terms of terms, they'd treat us differently to any other third country. The fact that that would be difficult for the English demonstrates how far we've fallen from being a serious country.

2025-08-30 16:46:43 UTC

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can I suggest that rejoining requires first of all a few years of behaving like adults (which Labour are more or less doing), a few years of gradual rapprochement eg SPS alignment, Erasmus (which Labour are mostly dragging their feet on), and few years of serious discussion about how to do it. It's going to take a long time, but we should be taking the first confident steps now.

2025-08-23 19:06:35 UTC

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this is true. What you see in the States is democrat voters staying loyal wile the leadership completely trashes the party. (The Republican party has already been trashed.)

2025-08-19 09:39:25 UTC

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I read the piece and found it curiously toothless. He analyses all Streeting has done, all he believes in, especially his unfettered interest in privatisation, and ends up more or less saying, "But, hey, that's where we're going".

2025-08-11 16:49:59 UTC

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and I've just noticed the journalist can't spell "enshittification".

2025-08-11 16:48:13 UTC

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but, Meredith, you have to understand, you cannot be a woman doing a UK interview without talking about your age, your shoe choices, and how you juggle work and children (whether you have any or not).

2025-07-13 10:34:43 UTC

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The UK has been the hotbed for the Financialisation Of Everything That Can Be Financialised over the last forty years (viz shit in rivers and children in care 400 miles from home), so that's an entire generation of managers who've been socialised into an understanding that there is no value in a firm except for what it can be sold for.

2025-07-07 14:50:21 UTC

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I've long thought of "Thatcher" and "Thatcherite" being two entirely different species. Thatcher was not and would never have been a Thatcherite. And she failed to understand the motives of the people she was using to try to bring about her revolution. You could say the "Thatcher" revolution failed, but the "Thatcherite" revolution succeeded all too well.

2025-07-02 10:21:59 UTC

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no we don't. We need the money that is being spent on these private arrangements to be put into the NHS, so that it can offer that kind of service to everybody, rather than the lucky few.

2025-06-12 18:49:46 UTC

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that's what I would have done "Leningrad (now St Petersburg)"
Reminds me of one of my favourite stories. Two old Russians sitting on a park bench.
"Where were you born?"
"St Petersburg."
"Oh. Where did you grow up?"
"Petrograd."
"Ah. And where did you live as an adult?"
"Leningrad."
"Oh right. And where do you live now?
"St Petersburg."

2025-05-25 11:25:30 UTC

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I'm not aware of any studies of pub groups, but I am aware of the work on university lectures which shows that students spend extraordinarily little time actually concentrating on what the lecturer is saying (little enough to seriously bruise many an academic ego).

2025-05-25 11:09:27 UTC

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what are you comparing this with? Back in the old days, which I'm old enough to remember, there'd be a group in the pub with no phones. The easy assumption is that they were all mentally present. But it could easily be that half of them were zoned out half the time and some, probably with eyes glazed, were desperately wishing they were somewhere else.

2025-05-03 15:59:37 UTC

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The world has changed since the 1980s Steven. It's changed since 2010; do you seriously think LibDems would entertain any kind of cosying up to the Tories? Every party that's ever been in power has embarrassing things in its past. That doesn't mean you should ignore the place they currently hold - 18 times more MPs than the Greens.

2025-05-03 15:27:48 UTC

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I wonder why you're thinking the Green Party and their 4 MPs, and not of the LibDems and their 72.

2025-04-22 10:00:54 UTC

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no problem. Etiam Homerus dormitat. 😉

2025-04-22 09:15:23 UTC

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Is that right about political research? My impression is that it's FPTP that turns voters minimax rather than democracy itself. In proportional systems there is more sense in voting for who they want rather than against who they don'[t want.

2025-04-08 09:29:52 UTC

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just don't call it "public health or they'll stop doing it.

2025-03-06 16:13:18 UTC

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Yeah, but there's a problem. If we build and expand small factories that churn out easily reproducible goods using the kind of materials and the kind of skilled and semi-skilled labour we have on hand, then how can consultancy firms possibly make a profit from that?

2025-03-02 10:04:30 UTC

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my first immediate thought was "multi academy trusts". My second thought was well, not all trusts, bu by God this fits so many. And they're actually focusing the toxic behaviour on the children.

2025-02-07 14:57:39 UTC

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to be fair, this was a clickbait headline from the Guardian, and quite grubby. She did say that, but only in response to a direct question about it, and after saying there were lots of people being held back by lack of treatment (being on NHS queues) and lack of support, and then saying there are many, many more people who desperately want to work but can't, and then finally she said some take the mickey as they have always.

2025-01-19 11:37:18 UTC

Note to all of our currently craven political parties here in the UK. It turns out that if you tax rich people on their wealth, they don't move. #UKPolitcs https://taxjustice.net/press/countries-can-raise-2-trillion-by-copying-spains-wealth-tax-study-finds/

2024-12-14 10:07:07 UTC

We're told ad nauseam that anything online is vulnerable, that They! Can! See! Everything! And today we find that the revolution that liberated Syria was co-ordinated on Whatsapp. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/14/the-army-just-ran-away-how-bashar-al-assad-lost-his-brutal-grip-on-syria

2024-12-06 11:54:04 UTC

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while the stats are persuasive, the way they're reported suggests the author would like to deal with the mismatch by making sickness benefits less attractive (*even* less attractive) thus driving more people to their deaths than the DWP already does.

2024-11-29 15:24:00 UTC

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It seems to be mostly UK rather than Europe. It's been suggested that he gets into it overnight when he's awake (due to the "non-prescription" drugs he liberally takes) and America is asleep. So he gravitates to another time zone; and given that he speaks English and no other European languages AIUI, the rest follows.

2024-10-26 21:01:13 UTC

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that doesn't really work, does it. You made a claim and have so far failed to provide evidence for it. I have not made a claim: I'm waiting for your evidence.

2024-10-26 16:57:15 UTC

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if you make a claim but refuse to provide the evidence for it, I will assume your claim has no merit.

2024-10-26 10:11:07 UTC

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Anybody who refers to any factor as being a major contributor to the NHS's current problems without saying that
Failure
Of
Money
is the one factor beside which all others pale into insignificance is bullshitting.

2024-10-09 15:39:15 UTC

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yes, whatever missteps Starmer is making - and he's making lots - if they bring about steady, even if small, improvement in the lives of the bottom 2/3, that will dent populism a lot. As well as being the right thing to do.

2024-10-09 14:57:37 UTC

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this is not true; most disability benefits are means tested. I think PIP (and DLA as was) an Attendance Allowance are the only ones not means tested. That doesn't invalidate your suspicion. There is a faction within DWP that will do anything to mess with claimants.

2024-10-09 14:51:05 UTC

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the silver lining is that it reduces the chances of a Tory revival prior to the next election. 🤔 #UKPolitics

2024-10-07 13:30:25 UTC

Is it a coincidence that the post code for the DWP's Oldham office, which handles all the ESA business, ends in "FU"? I think we should be told. #UKPolitics #disability

2024-10-06 10:10:29 UTC

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the answer to the mystery is - Labour are. I've never been so disappointed at the beginning of a new government. (When Tories get in, I'm disappointed at the election result, so it's already happened before they start.)

2024-10-04 20:13:08 UTC

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"... all they are doing is optimizing their performance to maximize reward and minimize red flags". No, they are not doing anything "to maximise reward" - they are not capable of purpose; there is no understanding of what a reward is. Their performance changes as new rules are added. That's all. And that's why they're not getting more accurate, because however much more data is poured in, they have no "knowledge" of "truth". Come on, arstechnica, this is basic.

2024-10-04 20:09:17 UTC

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while the logic of what is being said here is reasonable as an account of how AI is not becoming more accurate, the article anthopomorphises AI more than any other I have ever read. "AI models are not really intelligent, not in a human sense of the word." Wrong. There is no "intelligence" at all. That is not how they work.

2024-09-25 11:59:29 UTC

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IMO there is a strong case for universal benefits. They ensure that those who need it actually get it, whereas now we are being told about the several hundred thousand who ought to get it but don't. The overall saving is £1.4billion, which any spending department loses any time it sneezes. It can be made taxable so those who don't need it send some of it back, and the rest is a price worth paying for living in a civilised society as opposed to a cruel one.

2024-09-25 11:56:30 UTC

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I think you mean hypothermia. In any case, I assume reassurance to business was always the ill conceived purpose of this ill conceived cut.

2024-09-24 08:34:34 UTC

So now i's the Labour party failing to realise that many people are on long term sickness benefits - Because. They. Are. Sick. FFS do something about covid and the other condtions that cause long term sickness #UKPolitics

2024-09-08 09:57:24 UTC

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Labour didn't win this election so much as he Tories losing it. If history repeats itself (I'm very much hoping it will), the Tories will, as after 1997, go through two or three iterations of "We need to be even nastier" before tacking back to the centre and making themselves electable again. In other words, despite Labour's incipient poverty of aspiration, I'm banking on the Tories losing again in 2029.

2024-09-06 10:22:52 UTC

I've found a good use for AI for the Guardian. To check all its output for instances of "reign" and check that they are spelled correctly. Clue: if it comes after the word "free", it's not. #spelling

2024-08-25 09:26:24 UTC

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no.

2024-08-17 09:10:39 UTC

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I have to say this is positively uncivilised. You just get a bigger shelf.

2024-08-10 09:22:23 UTC

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It's not democracy as such, it's the first past the post system that forces people into a minimax posture. Bringing in PR would be one step to making democracy work a lot better.

2024-08-07 21:21:54 UTC

"Rioter who punched police officer in face in Southport jailed for three years". I'm wondering what he would have to have done to get five years like the climate protesters, who didn't actually protest... #UKPolitics