spanghero

watching and listening - who am I kidding, I'm all in A returnee, deeply sarcastic but not much to share at this point. May occasionally post own photographs as well. Anarchist leanings. Fuelled by coffee mostly. #Cycling #Photographs #Randomness #totp #NoAi Header - picture of half moon in daylight. Profile picture - same as header, half moon in daylight. He/him

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spanghero_at_ioc.exchange@momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-04-03 18:57:05 UTC

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Sounds bloody great. I was designing 3G networks in between getting shit faced, mostly in Belgium at the time.

2025-10-17 07:31:23 UTC

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It's purpose has clearly failed. The intent was to stifle protest against the actions of the Israeli Government and instead all it has done is put further pressure on the courts of England and Wales and further reduce the Government's popularity.

2025-10-10 19:55:04 UTC

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Bloody hell the film was out in 1986 so it wasn't that.

2025-10-10 19:53:54 UTC

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Want it the film? Off to IMDB I go...

2025-10-08 20:41:42 UTC

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So perhaps next week someone will be arrested for holding up a picture of the person arrested for holding up a magazine with a picture of someone who was arrested for holding up a placard saying 'I Oppose Genocide; I support Palestine Action.'
The following week, well, yes...I assume they'll stop when the placard becomes too small to read, or will they, given how bloody minded and obtuse they have been to date.

2025-10-01 07:10:22 UTC

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But it's just a bad apple or two and absolutely NOT institutional. It's purely coincidental that you can go back decades finding examples of these bad apples being racist, sexist, corrupt, murdery, corrupt, violent. Did I miss any absolutely not institutionalised criming these bad apples have been involved in?

2025-09-30 10:20:32 UTC

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They've lost their collective minds and all they will talk about are topics that benefit Reform, the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. There are no floating or wavering voters outside that very limited grouping, apparently.
Still, this Government is a potential godsend for political historians - how to win a massive majority and squander it by chasing and continually boosting a party with 5 MPs instead of implementing radical change.

2025-09-23 12:24:58 UTC

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Excellent article and great idea.

2025-09-23 07:41:33 UTC

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I don't see why the Government don't target areas like this to promote economic activity. Gets money to people who will spend it back into the economy rather than shifting off-shore to rest. Also means that trades can be boosted by apprenticeships to start covering long term demand (should they ever start building houses at volume).
Naïve I know as I have not considered the bond market, but then they never consider me either!

2025-09-19 19:06:58 UTC

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Maybe, but I'm not sure the nineties is done with us

2025-09-16 06:40:12 UTC

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Met police implode and disappear in a puff of paradoxical confusion.

2025-09-07 09:23:11 UTC

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Reactive is the term I'd use. He appears incapable of being proactive, instead letting others set the agenda (currently migration). With a radical majority he could introduce almost anything he wants and yet all we see is a continuation of Tory Government because that's what the media and opposition MPs are pushing. What's to stop him saying "The issue of small boats is serious and we as a Government will look at methods to reduce the numbers with an aim to stopping them, but other things are important factors in improving people's lives and these are what we are concentrating on..." but those aren't the topics the media are currently focusing on. Make them talk about something other than small boats and bloody flags.

2025-09-05 21:36:46 UTC

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Who else benefits in this instance? Morgan McSweeney.

2025-08-16 07:49:34 UTC

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Either they are sufficiently draconian in their future arrests and imprisonment that it stops people protesting or it continues to spiral until the Met and other forces start complaining privately to her that they can't cope and the press see it as a way further hurting Labour; "Old people jailed whilst nasty crims. (many foreign) terrorise the streets!"
If the latter McSweeney will have Starmer sack Cooper and roll it back claiming it was her doing all along. They'll install someone with a similar authoritarian bent and try again with a slightly different approach but the same end goal.
Boringly predictable and unimaginative.

2025-08-08 18:59:06 UTC

#totp We all coming back after the Dvorak proms performance?

2025-08-05 12:03:22 UTC

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Another list I aspire to be at included on.

2025-07-29 11:34:06 UTC

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Anyone got a pictorial guide to safe headwobbling? Asking for someone with really, really bad takes.

2025-07-24 07:18:04 UTC

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Away with your critical thinking and analysis.
New trade deal good...more money good...growth good.
As long as the increase represents a number considered 'big' by most people all will be well, i.e. £5bn is big to most, whereas 0.3% isn't despite them being the same in this case.*
* Assuming my reading and maths is correct - it's early and my caffeine levels are dangerously low.

2025-07-19 18:13:27 UTC

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I for one feel safe knowing that the police officers of this country are risking their physical well-being in order to protect us from peaceful pensioners holding a sign with some writing on it.
Just for the avoidance of doubt, </s>

2025-07-06 09:51:43 UTC

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So does that mean that if you open the conversation by asking the person if they will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation after your conversation and they state they won't you can express a supportive opinion of the proscribed organisation.
Actually by asking you aren't being reckless, surely, so regardless of their answer you can express supportive opinions/beliefs in the proscribed organisation.ind, regardless of the above, I agree, it is appalling slaw in a country that claims to value free speech, freedom of expression and the right to peaceful protest. Made worse by grouping a non-violent group in ith to fascist/Nazi supporting groups to ensure proscription.

2025-07-04 07:27:33 UTC

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Several life times ago I used to take use the Tube to travel across London into work. The odd day with a glow-stick waving fellow traveller would have been well received.

2025-06-30 07:23:12 UTC

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Spoiler: they won't*
*Why many were selected in the first place. It's about loyalty to leadership not loyalty to the party or public duty as an elected representative. Party politics as implemented in the UK is a terrible system that is breaking the country bit by bit.

2025-06-28 19:58:14 UTC

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He's desperate to ensure he's at most a single term PM isn't he? He could actually do something honourable and sod off.

2025-06-27 21:33:59 UTC

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I will empower the people and open multiple guillotine manufacturing facilities, turn Buckingham Palace into a homeless shelter and Windsor Castle into a crèche/adventure playground. I'd establish people's assemblies and sequest what was previously common land for us all once again. Wild camping would be permissable, re-wilding enforced and all professional politicians banished.
Railways, water, electricity and golf courses would all be nationalised and the golf courses would be turned into common allotments.
The sea bed would be taken off the royal family (me in this case) and given to the scallops and crabs.
I appreciate it'll be a busy couple of weeks, but I game if you lot are.

2025-06-27 21:25:45 UTC

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I wouldn't, sorry! I'm easily distracted...shiny things.

2025-06-27 21:16:23 UTC

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When I'm king* they'll be in the shit.
* Don't panic, I'll need about a fortnight to reform** stuff and I'll abolish myself and the position.
** I say reform, but of course I mean burn to the ground.

2025-06-25 06:45:13 UTC

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I think this is an ever growing problem exacerbated by Parliament after Parliament obsessing over economic growth. The current Government will pay a very heavy price for claiming change whilst actually working as hard as possible to avoid any change.

2025-06-18 08:59:17 UTC

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Which possibly makes the situation even worse and more callous - some people don't merit human intervention.

2025-06-10 06:46:45 UTC

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Whichever group collectively convinced politicians and the public that Government cannot run a debt forever and running the national budget has to be done in the same way as a household budget were, in their own way, brilliant.
We're never going to improve things as long as we're using an incorrect basic assumption about the system.

2025-05-29 07:42:59 UTC

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I think it's more about moving Labour into the centre-right ground. Reform have brought confusion to the existing system, traditionally focussing on the left - right axis with clear lines of demarcation. Populism scraps that by selectively picking from all along the axis, hence Labour and Tories scrabbling to counter this but being bad at it since they still have the traditional axis mindset.
Reform are successful in what they do because they have a charismatic leader who understands the public far better than other politicians and they've never actually had to deliver anything so aren't seen as being like all the others who were rubbish in Government (Labour, Tory, Lib Dem).
Add in the leader being polarising and a massive generator of engagement for media and it's a perfect shit-show. The answer is to stop letting the charismatic man dictate all discussions and policy. Use your radical majority to be radical or step aside, take up a job as a faceless non-exec (x240) and let someone else have a go because your wasting any legacy available to you and all because your advisor fears the populist, yet wants to be the populist!

2025-05-23 09:40:17 UTC

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Cycling for me (indoor included), but the trouble is if I miss a few days on the bounce I start getting really anxious/grouchy/tetchy/all three.

2025-05-08 06:56:59 UTC

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Well at least it's only 4 more years of cluelessness under Labour and then we can try fascist adjacent cluelessness. The centre and right have absolutely now idea how unappealing they are to the majority. Cloth-eared intellectual and political infants who rely on a broken and rigged system to cling to power and lord it over the rest. Was the idea of politician as public servant ever a thing, and if it was, when did it stop.*
I do believe we've had two PMs this century who fit the bill of taking the top job out of a sense of public service; Brown and May.

2025-05-04 07:40:08 UTC

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I'm just back from a beach hut where I watched the sun rise over a headland/the sea accompanied by the sound of an incoming tide washing over the pebbles and splashing over the rocks. I'm extremely fortunate living where I do so close to the sea.
Nature is a marvellous thing and we should become more aligned with it once again. Very calming, reassuring and settling.

2025-04-26 07:50:35 UTC

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Plans are terrible. I need them to get adulting things done but I hate them. What's wrong with starting 94 things in a weekend? I'll finish most of them, well some of them, probably.
Good luck getting to the gym today or tomorrow.

2025-04-02 07:36:31 UTC

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I think it's past reorganising. It needs scrapping entirely and replacing with an entirely new organisation. How many institutional issues have they had since the 1960s? Officers on the take, sex offenders, rapists, cover up after cover up and always "We're different" "Lessons learned" and yet here we are...again.

2025-03-30 12:30:44 UTC

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Long held belief among authorities that the general public cannot be trusted and needs to be nannied or they'll break things and sit on their arses all day twiddling their thumbs.
Probably reaches back into feudal times then 'the' empire and the attitude has never been corrected. Sad, really.

2025-03-27 11:33:00 UTC

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good luck with the CPAP. I've used one for a while and still get short periods every now and again (now!) where it irritates and I pull the mask off in the night. It'll pass and I'll get back to better sleep in a few days/weeks. Still better than the alternative.

2025-03-21 21:15:48 UTC

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Think he's trying to hide the result with his stance there - hiding his bits, badly.

2025-03-21 20:55:13 UTC

#totp Centrist Dad alarm

2025-03-21 19:21:49 UTC

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He's...well...he doesn't have a voice for indie

2025-03-21 19:14:33 UTC

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gratuitous slo-mo pan of her lower half there. #Arrisric #totp

2025-03-21 08:19:29 UTC

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Option c. is the only one she believes is available to her. Option a. would be seen as a failure and b. is absolutely never to be considered because trickle down will stop.
Our current position of managed decline will fast become unmanaged decline. Disaster capitalists playing her and Starmer beautifully from their own perspective. They're better for the parasites than the Tories.
They are like automatons "the neo-liberal status quo must be preserved at all costs".
I see the attraction of parties like Reform who project a desire to actually change* a dysfunctional system that serves the very few at the expense of everyone else.
* Spoiler - they won't because they're after a larger slice than they already have.

2025-03-17 07:29:01 UTC

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Based on previous financial, um, issues I sit firmly in the latter. Junk bonds was a previous sub-prime, and there have others all the way back to the tulips in the seventeenth(?) century. Then there was the LIBOR rate scandal. Guinness insider trading (amongst others). The list goes on.
Financial services are based on gambling; not that the market will always go up, but that you are sufficiently ahead of others that you make the most.

2025-03-16 08:31:22 UTC

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They understand soft power but have little or no idea of how it comes about. They also take local opinion of something and project out (BBC and World Service are interlinked in their mind).
They also get caught up in the latest management/political snake oil, currently 'disruptors'. Nobody appears to be taking the time to consider how long and difficult it will be to rebuild soft power.
Maybe look at the US and the fall out from a couple of months 'move quickly and break things'.
Old and slow techniques have sometimes been around long enough to get old for a good reason.

2025-03-14 08:10:43 UTC

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Agreed and we've never properly recovered from 2008 but I don't see how basically more of the same will ever improve this regardless of governing party, semantics used to describe spending cuts, etc.

2025-03-01 20:22:25 UTC

Couple of pictures taken in the back garden yesterday (28.02.25).
#Photography #Wildlife #Bee #Bird
https://files.ioc.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/089/014/693/051/200/original/ebfab798d8923f1d.jpg
https://files.ioc.exchange/media_attachments/files/114/089/014/799/010/211/original/59093b2c7006b842.jpg

2025-02-28 12:46:54 UTC

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I bet the silent billionaires who understand the need to stay in the background are spitting (very expensive) feathers about now. For years they've cultivated this influence that most people don't care about or are unaware of and then this lot pops up and shines a massive spotlight on it, shouting "Look at udls, we're all the same"

2025-02-27 11:33:06 UTC

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Dying newspapers say "Change Bad" ergo can't change because "Change Bad".
What a complete waste of a radical majority. It's a cliche but it'll be decades before Labour is forgiven for such a lack of courage simply to maintain the status quo of managed decline.
May the system as it currently is fail spectacularly. At that point they'll realise (too late for their own benefit) that change isn't always bad, and is even necessary at times*
* Spoiler - now is one of those times.
Sidenote - I've had very low expectations of politicians (the existing system encourages such types) but I have to say that the current Government even then still disappointed.

2025-02-22 09:42:03 UTC

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Wait, what, people actually exist outside the bottom right quarter of England? We thought it was just 'there be dragons'.

2025-02-20 22:13:05 UTC

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He'll be forever receiving 3 star feedback for shooting the bloke 2 doors down from his actual target, or putting the explosive device behind a random bin

2025-02-20 08:52:38 UTC

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To be honest he's not offering anything in that article beyond improving the status quo. Fixing broken things to stimulate growth. What if the starting point shouldn't actually be growth measured by a couple of catch all figures (inflation and GDP)?

2025-02-20 08:47:19 UTC

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Indeed because all of their public policy utterances are very much in support of the status quo. Small boats, no money, growth, etc.

2025-02-12 21:03:26 UTC

Image cropped but no other modification. A tree in the neighbour's garden silhouettes against the moon, taken in the winter.
#Photography #Moon #Tree
https://files.ioc.exchange/media_attachments/files/113/992/926/795/375/583/original/abc996b2b5a85e68.jpg

2025-02-06 07:56:05 UTC

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Will nobody think of their post-Governmental gravy train riding opportunities?
They are either happy to serve a single term or they really believe they can win a second term simply by being more competent than their predecessors.*
* A bad policy done well is still a bad policy, and sometimes worse than a badly done bad policy.

2025-01-24 08:35:43 UTC

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...but it'll be fine this time. The people and organisations who used previous loosening of regulation to crash the economy last and the time before that and the times before that for decades have definitely learned this time and cross their heart promise that it'll be different this time and they won't break things. Honestly, you won't all be in it together because we need yet another bail out, what with us being too big to fail despite failing quite spectacularly...again.

2025-01-21 22:38:36 UTC

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I'm looking forward to the 'too big to fail bail outs' that they'll happily dish out when this reduction in regulation to promote growth gets exploited beyond tolerances, leading to the inevitable crash, followed by a commission that will suggest lessons need to be learned (spoiler - they won't). Rinse and repeat.
Labour and Tory - two cheeks of the same arse.