FlyTheNest

OK don't then

Curses,foiled.

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... ortunities" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Open consultation

Armed Forces Pension consultation regarding new flexible service opportunities

Have we had this one? We - everyone - always needs this one.

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UK stays behind Germany, France and Scandewegia but also falls behind Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia in the EU Research and Development rankings.

R&D can’t fly against the winds of austerity and Brexit

There is a warning to the government in the latest official figures on research and development: they reveal that most of the research is being done by the three industries most vulnerable to Brexit.

I've PTOd.

HindleA wrote:https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... transwomen

Legal challenge to Labour over shortlists and transwomen
Campaign launched as Labour states women-only shortlists are open to self-defining women

This row is bubbling under in the local Labour party here - largely because, as I suspect is the case in a fair few places around the country, there are one or two people with very strong opinions who want to force a debate.

The government are consulting on changing the legal status of transgender folk by recognising self-definiton, rather than medicalising the process of identification and demanding some kind of official recognition after two years of living as the self-identified gender. So I'd like to think the argument that people are making isn't 'men are men and women are women' but is 'we're happy with the current way of doing things but this new suggestion is off the scale.' But it really doesn't feel like that.

I kind of hope the debate makes it to a conclusion, so people can get used to it now, instead of spending twenty years sniping and then coming round to the fact that they were on the wrong side of history all along (cf women's rights, gay rights, ethnic minority rights...)

The big argument against seems to be a (minor) reduction of the 'big hairy man in a dress using the little girls' bathroom' argument that gets pushed in the States. But any group within the party can choose to exclude anyone from that group because of their behaviour - that's just a self-regulating necessity.

The extreme conspiracy theorist in my head - the one who knows, knows I tell you, that political correctness was invented by right wing American academics to make white liberals look stupid - wonders if this is an issue being manufactured to try to tie the left in a knot - 'let's set one 'rights' group against another and see if either of them are left standing at the end'. Especially because it's fully acknowledged, even by the people here who are very vigilantly trying to push the question of opposing self-definition, that this is a purely theoretical discussion around here just now and nobody is aware of anyone involved in the party locally who it applies to.

HindleA wrote:https://www.gov.uk/government/consultat ... ortunities


Open consultation

Armed Forces Pension consultation regarding new flexible service opportunities

Not quite an open consultation - but any excuse.

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Now your showing off.

PorFavor wrote:I've PTOd.

HindleA wrote:Now your showing off.

It's the electric underwear wot made me do it. Still, those smug Russians will put a stop to that, apparently.

PorFavor wrote:

HindleA wrote:Now your showing off.

It's the electric underwear wot made me do it. Still, those smug Russians will put a stop to that, apparently.

It's the natural end-game for 'the internet of things'. "We're very sorry but it appears your underwear has been hacked".

(There is a bell ringing in my head about an article not very long ago on how there are groups who specialise in hacking internet-linked sex toys. So maybe underwear isn't the end-game)

Night night.

The things I search for so you can stay out of prison.

Guardian article - Someone made a smart vibrator, so of course it got hacked

Two years ago, someone had the good idea to put a bluetooth connection inside a vibrator, and the We-Vibe 4 Plus was born. The vibrator can connect with a smartphone app that its makers say “allows couples to keep their flame ignited – together or apart”: that is, it can be controlled remotely, while, say, making a video call.

But at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, two independent hackers from New Zealand, who go by the handles goldfisk and follower, revealed that the way the vibrator speaks with its controlling app isn’t really secure at all – making it possible to remotely seize control of the vibrator and activate it at will.

Before it's too late, having only found out about it today,
Happy St.Gertrude's Day, to all the cats & cat lovers out there.
http://www.catster.com/lifestyle/st-ger ... tricks-day" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

adam wrote:The things I search for so you can stay out of prison.

Guardian article - Someone made a smart vibrator, so of course it got hacked

Two years ago, someone had the good idea to put a bluetooth connection inside a vibrator, and the We-Vibe 4 Plus was born. The vibrator can connect with a smartphone app that its makers say “allows couples to keep their flame ignited – together or apart”: that is, it can be controlled remotely, while, say, making a video call.

But at the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, two independent hackers from New Zealand, who go by the handles goldfisk and follower, revealed that the way the vibrator speaks with its controlling app isn’t really secure at all – making it possible to remotely seize control of the vibrator and activate it at will.

We are collectively mad.

Good morfternoon.

Just woken up to the (settled) snow. It isn't quite as bad as last time but it's just started snowing again quite determinedly. Flake size: normal.

A cup of tea seemed to be in order.

I await all you skivers' weather reports and a report from tinyclanger2 on sleep quality (which I hope was good).

(The the mauve-ish glow is absent, as it was last time. What's going on? Snow-wise, I mean.)

@tinyclanger2

Oh - and there you are! Did you sleep ok?

(With, or without, a mauve-ish glow.)

PorFavor wrote:Good morfternoon.

Just woken up to the (settled) snow. It isn't quite as bad as last time but it's just started snowing again quite determinedly. Flake size: normal.

A cup of tea seemed to be in order.

I await all you skivers' weather reports and a report from tinyclanger2 on sleep quality (which I hope was good).

(The the mauve-ish glow is absent, as it was last time. What's going on? Snow-wise, I mean.)

Quite right

PorFavor wrote:@tinyclanger2

Oh - and there you are! Did you sleep ok?

(With, or without, a mauve-ish glow.)

I slept for 6 hours uninterrupted which is pretty good going.
No glow, sadly.

Quite rightly . . .

[youtube]zXeRB-3nDR8[/youtube]

Too early?

a tad

May, May, Johnson and Gove … new Brexit comic copies Trumpton roll call
Monthly publication will mock the EU protagonists with cartoons based on 1960s children’s TV show
(Observer)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... mpton-town

PorFavor wrote:

May, May, Johnson and Gove … new Brexit comic copies Trumpton roll call
Monthly publication will mock the EU protagonists with cartoons based on 1960s children’s TV show
(Observer)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... mpton-town

Excellent.

I liked:

Dicks, a former independent TV producer, began with caricatures of Ukip leader Nigel Farage in the run-up to the 2016 referendum.

“I’d been worrying about him and Ukip,” Dicks told the Observer. “I kept thinking about how Farage was looking back to a golden age, but he’s about the same age as me, so what era is he referencing? My recollection of the 1960s and 70s was that in many ways it was a rather shit time.

“He made me think of Trumpton, which was about an old-fashioned town with no foreigners – except Mr Antonio the ice-cream man, who was almost run out of town – and an autocratic mayor. It seemed the sort of place and sort of Britain Farage was nostalgic about, so I started a Trumpton_Ukip Twitter account to gently mock him, his supporters and their backward-looking views. It had a couple of hundred followers at most, enjoying my silly jokes.”

Trumpton
@Trump_ton
This used to be a parody account, but the politicians we targeted became parodies of themselves
https://twitter.com/Trump_ton" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Incidentally, the "Quite rightly" bit seems to be absent from the version I posted. Oh, well. That's a fail, then.

Yes - the bit you highlighted in red stuck out for me, too (the Trumpton article).

Quite snowy here this morning. Trans-pennine roads pretty much all closed. Our plans for the day are off!

Instead, I think we'll find a local pub that's open, get our winter gear on and walk there for lunch

https://brainkittens.com/2017/03/12/my- ... -a-prison/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://neweconomics.org/2017/11/where-was-social-care/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle- ... ws_central" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Centre of Syrian city seized - Turkey

https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2018 ... arian.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A road to right wing authoritarian government

Alan Duncan on TV (BBC, Sunday Politics) saying that we are not in a weaker position (re Russia) as a result of "Brexit" because we are, at the moment, still an EU member. Logic is obviously not his strong point.

Look at the graph.

Speech on local government funding cuts
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Peston on Sunday
@pestononsunday
"I agree completely with the Prime Minister" - @johnmcdonnellMP says @UKLabour agree with the government on Russian culpability for the poisoning in Salisbury. #Peston

John McDonnell's forthrightness often gets him into trouble but on Russia I think I prefer it to Corbyn's indecisive equivocation. The Tories have questions to answer over Russian money, regardless of what happened in Salisbury. I hope Labour can keep the pressure on. Apparently Johnson was asked about donations this morning on Marr, and didn't have any satisfactory answers by all accounts.

Good morning

Willow, can you point me to the evidence so I can see where Putin ordered this, the provenance is clearly Russian and that the Russians have an active CW program as claimed by Johnson

Scientists will have drawn some conclusions but they will have been through other hands and other interpretations

Personally I find some of the claims deserve more circumspection than we have seen based on previous experience

https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... are_btn_tw" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am pretty sure that there is a strong link to Russia but that is based on circumstantial evidence

That is not the claim the Government is making and their more specific assertion s have not been tested

All I can say is what I have heard from the Government and commentators on the chemistry side does not add up and if that is the same for the other evidence then I retain skepticality

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 56776.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Labour announces plan to protect social housing as figures reveal 100,000 low-cost homes have had rents hiked since 2012

May has said it highly likely the Russian state was responsible.

Based on her own assertion, the government's connections to the Russian state therefore need to be scrutinised.

McDonnell accepting her assertion helps Labour to keep pressure on politically on issues that would have been important whether the events in Salisbury happened or not.

If her assertion is proved incorrect at a later date, that is a problem for her, not an opposition who only has access to the evidence she has given them.

Of course I want the police and security services to investigate and get properly to the bottom of what happened, but this may take time or never be fully resolved.

In the meantime there are lots of things we can quite legitimately seek to do, such as pass the Magnitsky amendment or reduce our dependence on Russian gas, prompted by the assumption that May's assertion is correct because even if it isn't these are things we would benefit from doing anyway.

Good-afternoon, everyone

Willow904 wrote:May has said it highly likely the Russian state was responsible.

Based on her own assertion, the government's connections to the Russian state therefore need to be scrutinised.

McDonnell accepting her assertion helps Labour to keep pressure on politically on issues that would have been important whether the events in Salisbury happened or not.

If her assertion is proved incorrect at a later date, that is a problem for her, not an opposition who only has access to the evidence she has given them.

Of course I want the police and security services to investigate and get properly to the bottom of what happened, but this may take time or never be fully resolved.

In the meantime there are lots of things we can quite legitimately seek to do, such as pass the Magnitsky amendment or reduce our dependence on Russian gas, prompted by the assumption that May's assertion is correct because even if it isn't these are things we would benefit from doing anyway.

I didn't accept that argument from the Tories when they supported Iraq without any questioning

By accepting the assertions does that include the latest from Johnson this morning?

Since Iraq and Hillsborough I do not want to see politicians accept Government assertions without questioning...and I thought that what Corbyn was doing in his statement

@howsillyofme1
I've re-read Willow904's post and your own
Is there any fundamental difference between analyses?
I don't see any

http://www.dannydorling.org/?p=6436" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/201 ... n-mod-land" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Property firms make millions buying and selling on MoD land
MoD fails to ensure windfall profits are returned to taxpayer or development occurs, says opposition

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ ... ssion=true" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

John McDonnell calls for the government to clamp down on Russian tax dodgers
The Shadow Chancellor unveiled a five-point plan to tighten up the rules that could net the Treasury £1billion

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org. ... nd-debates" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


What is the current progress of the EU Withdrawal Bill?

gilsey wrote:Look at the graph.

Speech on local government funding cuts
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...when you are ideologically wedded to a small state and low taxation, your first port of call for cuts will inevitably be places you don’t live, affecting people you do not know. ... local government budgets have been cut by 50% since austerity began. No other area of spending has fared so ill.

do read the speech if you've not already, it's not long

PTO