beemoh

Windows Phone nostalgic

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Last Notes

2026-05-19 17:39:17 UTC

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That's a lot of brackets.
Anyway, looks like standard operating practice for the current Government: do nothing, then maybe ask *really* nicely if someone else will do it for you.

2026-05-17 18:32:42 UTC

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The NHS part might be referring to private contractors?

2026-05-14 17:34:06 UTC

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The funniest thing to happen would be the Greens winning.

2026-05-11 12:25:33 UTC

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And what about those of us who previously opted out of being part of any central database?

2026-05-09 13:30:12 UTC

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I wonder how well that will work considering what would be normally considered to be the largest part of that alliance- Labour- is already in power and people are underwhelmed?
Given a blue-Tory government as in 2024 then The Devil You Don't is actually an option. Given the red-Tory one we theoretically will have in 2029, it isn't.

2026-05-04 09:48:35 UTC

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This feels like something I've thought before- we had 'something' under the Cameron-to-Sunak Conservatives and it didn't work.
Then, according to the press, we moved left under Starmer's Labour and... it didn't work. (Mainly because we didn't move left. In fact, we didn't move anywhere at all)
There's a good chance that next time, people won't want a return to the 'something' and will skip the Conservatives out of hand on that basis, and want to try the opposite side of it- that is, Reform.

2026-04-20 08:47:46 UTC

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Although considering Rachel Reeves' approach to managing the economy is "austerity and the Bank of England", I think it's fair to say she does deserve at least a triple-figure percentage of the blame for any recession we get.

2026-04-19 22:14:46 UTC

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Shouldn't be too long before we get the usual headline...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens

2026-04-14 17:16:49 UTC

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Although considering the absence of pushback against the war from the PM, we can reasonably blame him as well.

2026-04-13 10:46:35 UTC

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Yup.
Worried that, like here in 2024, they'll be too busy celebrating that the bogeyman has gone away and neglect to scrutinise their replacement, winding up with someone exactly the same.

2026-04-09 17:16:26 UTC

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Amazing how it managed to ricochet to "reduce populism's appeal" from "literally enforcing populism specifically".

2026-04-06 15:23:37 UTC

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But let's not also forget, when the Government starts crowing about how amazing they are for doing so, that they spent a long time refusing to lift the cap, justifying the existence of the cap, and kicking their own MPs out of the party for suggesting lifting the cap.

2026-03-31 17:16:47 UTC

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Or If Kier Starmer wants the NHS to succeed (he doesn't) or fail (he does).
The annoying thing is, if either of them *really* wanted to solve the strikes problem, the smart thing is to hire loads more doctors and dilute the pro-IA vote. Of course, the only way to do that...

2026-03-31 13:45:37 UTC

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The sole "potential" of AI is how much money it might potentially make people with far too much of it as it is.

2026-03-14 22:47:35 UTC

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It wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't you that posted it, but I remember seeing a story go past a bit ago suggesting that the fossil fuel industry knows their time is up and they're just trying to squeeze out at much as they can before the big day, so I'd imagine at this point they just don't care.

2026-03-09 10:06:59 UTC

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And this is why I pushed for the P2P Lending approach.
Admittedly it's probably not large enough a market to fully neuter the bond markets as a threat, but you've got to start it somewhere, I guess.

2026-03-09 10:00:12 UTC

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What's making it hard for those with vacancies to fill them?

2026-02-26 09:53:45 UTC

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While the best result would be a Green win, the most interesting result will be if Reform come third- regardless of what order Green and Labour fill the two slots above, that would do the most to blow a hole in the "split vote" argument.
(The funniest would be the Lib Dems winning it somehow)
However, should Reform win, we can expect Labour to say it's the Greens' fault rather than their own for not giving people anything to vote for. Which I guess would make a change from the usual "Government doesn't normally win by-elections" excuse.

2026-02-25 22:53:30 UTC

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Were UK investors offered it in any meaningful way?
Do UK investors have the money to do it, considering they don't have anything coming in from all those other investments they didn't make?

2026-02-10 09:55:44 UTC

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My theory here is betting shops are popular because it's actually something to *do*.
I have little sympathy for the alleged demise of pubs because I'm of the view they're the most boring places on earth- they're at best somewhere you park yourself while you wait to go somewhere else. This is proven out by the product offering of the biggest player in the space- Wetherspoons- being that it doesn't even play music or show sport.
The betting shop at least gives you a game to play- rubbish ones that are unfairly weighted against you and involve little engagement- but a game nonetheless.
If someone can find a less harmful way of tapping into that, we could be onto a winner.

2026-02-08 14:58:34 UTC

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"I will continue to back that mission in any way I can"
So he'll still be instructing Starmer, just without the official Government job title. Nothing has changed.

2026-02-05 09:41:23 UTC

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Probably also that friendly press like the Guardian have rumbled him on his "success" on waiting lists being an act of gaming the stats, not actual good stewardship of the NHS.
https://x.com/i/status/2018594915027124225
(Although Streeting did very publicly say that this was what they were going to do ages ago and was lauded for it)

2026-02-04 19:15:41 UTC

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*and* the alleged 'ban' was nothing of the sort- what they were suggesting was only to ban 'exploitative' ZHCs, which is easily dodged by just defining all ZHCs as 'not exploitative', and if that's too vague, it was also going to allow such where the worker accepts the 'flexibility' of a ZHC, at which point it's very clear that any potential employee who didn't accept said flexability would suddenly find the role was no longer available.
Basically, any suggestion that Labour are going to do anything about ZHCs is a lie today, it was a lie when they first pitched it, and it's been a lie all the time in between.

2026-02-02 13:44:18 UTC

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All very fair.
I'm really trying to defend against, to pull a wildly unrealistic extreme out of the air, a painfully thin-skinned control freak become not only party leader but also Prime Minister accidentally getting a huge majority of seats not befitting the tiny, smallest-proportion-of-any-winner-since-WWII vote share they received in a GE, using this legislation to kick any MP out that doesn't agree with them and replace them with someone more submissive.
Better would probably be for scheduled votes to come around more often and it wouldn't really matter, although any way I can see that as workable runs into this same jump/pushed edge case.
(The other big thing that sticks out to me is I don't recall there being this much noise about the matter when it was anti-Brexit MPs defecting from May's Conservatives to the Lib Dems...)

2026-02-01 22:16:12 UTC

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My view is:
* If you leave the party, yes
* If you are kicked out of the party, no

2026-01-29 19:21:28 UTC

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What hostile media?

2026-01-20 18:31:03 UTC

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Let's not give him ideas.

2026-01-15 18:35:50 UTC

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Something that might feed into this is that I've heard very little negative about the Council that the Greens won a majority on last year.
Conversely, the Reform councils seem intent on very visibly embarrassing themselves to wide media coverage as frequently as possible.
The working theory with a lot of people (certainly those replying to yourself) is that Reform's failure in local gov is going to scare people off voting for them at the national level.
The question is will the opposite happen for the Greens? I find it a little concerning that I've also not heard much positive about them either...

2026-01-15 18:21:01 UTC

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They may have been requested by the councils, but they were offered by the Government, who didn't need to offer them in the first place- I feel the accusation stands.

2026-01-08 09:50:17 UTC

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I was going to say something similar, albeit less gently: the problem pubs have is that people have finally realised that they're the most boring places on earth and have moved on to something else.

2026-01-01 19:24:01 UTC

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I mean, if you're going to bring up antagonism towards London, I'm not sure dismissing everything outside as "The Hinterlands" is the best way to do it.

2025-12-30 14:22:13 UTC

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But at least we've only got another two years of dawdling before Streeting releases his report on social care and they can find some other reason not to actually start doing something!

2025-12-08 18:48:06 UTC

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I think that's an important one- while Mr Farage is getting a little bit of an easy ride, it's more important that the press are unwilling to criticize Brexit itself for fear of blowback from the audience.
(If anything, what the press have thrown at Farage is probably evidence of that)
By primarily focusing on Brexit, I still think we're letting all Governments since off the hook for refusing to invest in the country for sixteen years straight- it lets them say "we didn't invest because Brexit" when the truth is that they didn't invest because they didn't want to- but that's not a reason to ignore it.

2025-12-05 09:58:11 UTC

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But also makes it risker for companies to dismiss someone at the upper end unfairly: before, the compensation might have been cheaper than a £119k redundancy package.

2025-11-30 17:45:56 UTC

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That is 100% what it is. Going to be very interesting to look up who his donors and supporters are.

2025-11-29 21:43:39 UTC

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It does interest me that people in right-wing parties can be at one another's throats at all times and it's just the natural order of things and a sign of a healthy, open party- but if two people on the left have the most minor divergence of opinion with one another, it's immediately "factionalism".

2025-11-27 21:32:22 UTC

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Bit rich of him to accuse someone else of being "misleading" when he briefed The Times with a borderline fraudulent poll because it benefitted him...

2025-11-20 10:39:39 UTC

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How is the currency doing? I seem to recall the FTSE doing well after the referendum, but that being an illusion due to the pound crashing.

2025-11-18 09:48:31 UTC

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I was thinking about this last night, and wasn't the problem with the Oasis tour that the retailer, not secondary marketeers, were jumping up prices?
I get touts would have an upwards effect on said pricing, but they strike me as not the issue specifically...

2025-11-13 09:29:15 UTC

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Labour will continue to interpret this as "Eh, Reform will collapse on their own, we don't need to do anything"

2025-11-09 16:57:28 UTC

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I wonder if this is the main drive behind them reforming Leasehold, to make it easier for banks to buy up all the houses more than it is people?
it *was* Gove that started it all off, after all...

2025-11-05 19:09:54 UTC

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There is a difference between using the language of the Right to push the policies of the Left, and doing it to push the policies of the Right.
Sadly, Labour keep insisting on doing the latter.

2025-11-04 09:41:47 UTC

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I can think of an easier way to stop people protesting, not just outside MPs homes, but elsewhere, too.

2025-10-17 17:19:05 UTC

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This could be as simple as getting a cheap headline out of taxing 'foreign' residents- let's not read something into this that might not be there.

2025-10-15 09:23:28 UTC

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If only there was some way people could work from their homes, or something.

2025-10-14 21:42:35 UTC

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I'm loathe to say anything nice about Liz Truss, but she did manage to get one and a half things right in her 44 days.
One was slinging her hook when it was clear she was useless (hint hint, Mr Starmer) but the half was that she rapidly subsidised electricity bills for all when prices spiked due to Putin invading Ukraine, used the power of the state to help people handle at least this aspect of the Cost Of Living.
I say only half, because she failed to follow it up with actively doing something to bring those prices back down, which needed to be direct and immediate engagement in generation. Not 'regulate'- *do*, even if only in the short term- Gov't actively being the ones to set up the solar panels, wind turbines, arrays of hamsters in wheels etc- so that supply and demand does its thing and the subsidy ceases to be necessary, maybe even start to recoup its costs.
Labour just refuse to do this. The closest they've come is so lacking that it might as well not exist.

2025-10-10 13:51:46 UTC

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They have trains like that on another line, it's great fun to look down one as it goes around a bend.

2025-10-07 09:03:02 UTC

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I've got a feeling it's less to do with financialisation as there not being regionality any more- while you were getting bored of the local music scene, the next city over were sat in a bubble developing a sound and you wouldn't find out about it- and it wouldn't influence your scene- until it matured into something it could show the world.
Now online I can flick to someone living in Puerto Rico singing K-Pop without even trying.
I'd argue that there being all these influences available, as well as a reduced ability to refuse to move on from The Classics™ is broadly better, not worse- but does lead to a certain level of Grey Goo.
(May I also recommend Pete & Bas if you're looking for some more unique Hip-Hop?)

2025-10-01 19:53:44 UTC

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Far be it from me to draw any connections to any real-world events, but I'd imagine they'd start pressing Governments to discourage their citizens from investing in cash, in favour of stocks and shares.

2025-10-01 18:08:03 UTC

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What an appropriate cash value.

2025-09-26 17:13:50 UTC

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Someone, hopefully, will come along with that letter in that newspaper about someone's politics moving from centre-right to radical left despite not actually changing.

2025-09-22 08:42:00 UTC

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Weren't they already, broadly speaking, the responsibility of councils?

2025-09-20 14:38:44 UTC

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Definitely a lack of forethought, but mainly as it's a terrible idea regardless of how well they plan it- it's more cuts for cuts sake, per every other decision Starmer's Labour have made so far.
I do wonder why they don't consider payments like these as outside the budget though- it's not like adding a new role which requires finding the cost of doing so theoretically forever- these are one-and-done payments that immediately reflect if not an actual saving, at least a reduction in outgoing and/or the freeing up of a resource to deploy elsewhere. Leave everything else running and call this one quits.

2025-09-14 13:30:30 UTC

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I seem to remember there was an attempt to popularise STEAM- the same, but with Arts- at one point. I guess not enough came out of it.

2025-09-09 22:04:05 UTC

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Also feels like it suddenly incentivises artificially inflating rents, too.

2025-08-30 14:49:49 UTC

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One council- Mid Suffolk.
The excuse they use for coverage is that they follow polling data rather than seats, and as much as I don't like the end result, I do think it's the right approach- polling is a slightly better measure of public opinion but it doesn't necessarily track 1:1 to seats, as I'm sure every Lib Dem will tell you.
Of course, it could be the reason one is polling better than the other is because one gets given so much airtime...

2025-08-19 08:34:50 UTC

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Holy shit, the Guardian are finally seeing the man for who he is, after only five years of telling us how amazing he is, giving him endless uncritical promotion and even letting him write things for them?
Good thing they're doing that now, since it's too late to do anything about him.

2025-08-12 08:29:48 UTC

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What are the markets doing? I'm increasingly convinced this is less to do with tariffs and more to do with stock market manipulation, and the more it happens the more I'm convinced by it.

2025-08-11 12:29:30 UTC

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Maybe.
I guess there's discussion to be had on where the line is between 'editorial freedom' and 'trying to have it both ways', but perhaps that's for one more familiar with post-selloff The Observer as a whole than me.

2025-08-11 08:44:07 UTC

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Little bit rich for the observer to be saying this now after running a front page story about how amazing ID Cards are going to be in stopping immigration specifically.

2025-08-09 17:20:34 UTC

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It's the think tank that paid for much of the Labour hard right's expenses through funneling many of its less attractive donors and did most of their publicity as well as all the sabotage in the 2017/19 elections.

2025-08-01 23:16:23 UTC

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There is one remaining one somewhere in London that is still a lamp, lit by the gases emanating from below.
There's a sign next to in commemorating it, and everything.

2025-07-30 08:42:55 UTC

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Was it a Pratchett quote about something being 'technology' until it's common, then it's just 'the thing that it is'?

2025-07-18 08:45:41 UTC

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I'd do it in an "they're all the same" way, personally. 😉
George Osborne and Wes Streeting were both at some think tank event for privatising the NHS a few years ago, and Osborne said to Wes (with no pushback) that it's much easier for Labour to push privatization through than the Conservatives because people are more generally on guard for what Cons are up to, but will wave it through for Labour because they're perceived as a pro- NHS party, and it's presumed their policies are good, even if they're identical.
It wouldn't surprise me if bankers took a similar approach, enough people will take a blinkered view of Labour and just assume they're actually legislating for workers not bankers. Concerningly considering the absence of criticism I see of Starmer's Labour, I think they might be right.

2025-07-17 17:18:38 UTC

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Looks like the wrong link to me?

2025-07-16 22:09:14 UTC

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Or at least the repopularisation of CD-R drives.

2025-07-03 20:05:41 UTC

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If you want to subject yourself to The Other Place, then Shaun Lintern has some good critique of the Plan
He writes for The Times, which is notably the biggest pro-Starmer newspaper, so it's all coming in reasonable faith, too.

2025-06-23 21:27:33 UTC

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No official statement from the Party proper, but Caroline Lucas has Retweeted Liberty's condemnation of the proscription, and Zack Polanski has also been very vocal on this matter.
I haven't been looking at the current leadership so I don't know if they have or haven't said anything.

2025-06-23 08:33:49 UTC

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I guess since PIP isn't an out-of-work payment, there isn't really a need to?

2025-06-21 11:05:26 UTC

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I've seen this exact comment come up in the US, as well.
Farage-as-Trump-clone once again...

2025-06-19 12:16:37 UTC

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Eh, I'd say three days in is a compromise that benefits bosses more than workers- and any 'comprimose' that benefits the people who already have the advantage isn't much of a compromise.
Besides, it isn't like bosses are going to even attempt to explore offering two in instead and aren't already agitating for four.

2025-06-19 09:08:51 UTC

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"compromise" being "bosses getting what they want", then.

2025-06-17 12:56:20 UTC

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Also a good strat for if you can't find your glasses.
Camera on, phone close to eyes. This will either
a/ make the world around you clearer as you can focus on the screen near to you rather than the distant room, or
b/ make a loud 'clack' noise as the top edge of your phone hits the bottom edge of the glasses on your head

2025-06-16 08:00:38 UTC

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Now, is Wes going to actually employ more GPs to achieve this?

2025-06-12 09:01:35 UTC

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I've thought this, particularly around WFA.
Stamer and Reeves have been very consistent around claiming the matter being due to the state of the economy: WFA had to be cut to save the economy, and they could put it back because the economy was healthier (and not because they got a drubbing in the locals), meaning surely WFA is going to be first on the chopping block when the economy next takes a knock, which isn't going to be reassuring to people worried about losing it in the first place.
To a certain extent also, I'd argue that it's Government's job to *protect* us from the economy- like how Social Security is there for when work isn't, how Furlough and all sorts of business reliefs were there at the start of the pandemic and so on- and here they are, fairly explicitly saying that isn't what they're going to do.

2025-06-10 08:46:09 UTC

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What *will* we do, or what *should* we do?
Because, given off last form, that's "give them absolutely everything that they want" and "absolutely not that, under any circumstances" respectively

2025-06-09 13:04:49 UTC

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I still don't trust the idea, but isn't that a lot like David Cameron's "National Citizen Service"?

2025-06-09 07:44:57 UTC

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I hear elsewhere that Reeves is considering subsidising electricity costs for industry- but only industry.
Even Liz Truss was awake enough to make sure that her electricity subsidies applied to everyone.

2025-06-05 09:09:26 UTC

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I was happily nodding along and agreeing with him until he came out with this:
"Not because Starmer and his ministers are bad people, or because they have bad values or even bad policies."
...and then all credibility went straight out of the window.
Less facetiously, focusing on defence does also show a failure of priority. If I'm sat on a waiting list, four years away from an operation I need, bombing foreigners isn't going to solve that. If I'm paying all my wages to extortionate rents due to a lack of social housing, bombing foreigners isn't going to solve that.
I get Government can- has to- do multiple things, at the same time, but the order and scale they do them in matters.

2025-06-01 11:32:45 UTC

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I believe many of them are this sort of thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuAXoQ0luR4

2025-05-28 08:56:21 UTC

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Yeah, fines make sense in a true competitive market- a fine for the pizza place on one end of the high street that, say, breaks hygiene laws means management have to take the hit- increasing price, lowering quality or otherwise taking it out on customers will only cause custom to move to the pizza place at the other end.
For a natural monopoly like water, the only thing it can do is punish people unfortunate enough to live in that water company's area. The only way to actually punish the people responsible is removal from their position or jail time.

2025-05-26 14:22:02 UTC

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Or more people would work from home, meaning they wouldn't need to get trains at all, reducing peak demand.
Over time, fewer people would need to live in commercial centres meaning they'd be able to move away, freeing up dwellings near workplaces that can't be done remotely, so people with those jobs wouldn't need trains either.

2025-05-13 12:22:15 UTC

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Will that matter, given the trajectory under Reeves being that they're all going to be crashed into larger funds anyway?

2025-05-02 22:47:24 UTC

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As a Green supporter that would quite like to see Reform disappear forever, this is a bit of a push from Ramsey.
While the maths is technically right, it's taken the Greens four years to win those seats, while Reform did theirs in one. If next year's locals are similar to this ones, Reform will be breathing down the Greens' necks if they don't surpass them in total- especially when you consider that they'll have to defend 159 of them compared to Reform's two.
A better comparison will be in 2029, when both have had a go at all sets of Council seats (assuming Starmer hasn't abolished them all by then)

2025-04-30 12:15:46 UTC

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The issue with that is that I've seen more than one person suggest that Trump generally has the right idea.

2025-04-28 17:19:18 UTC

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Because that would result in people looking a little closer at the bill and realising that it doesn't really change an awful lot.

2025-04-18 13:32:47 UTC

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At which point they'll conclude "Ooh, Reform are popular, we should be even more like them than we already are"

2025-04-17 08:42:03 UTC

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Like basically everything else Streeting does, I don't trust this. The Conservative Government handled Jos Seekers' Allowance similarly- paid companies based on not sending claimants back to the job centre, rather than on getting them jobs.
What happened was they just found ways of kicking people off JSA, because it was the same amount of money for less effort than actually getting people into employment.
This will be the same thing. It won't actually get people treatment, it'll just keep them out of hospitals.

2025-04-13 18:36:55 UTC

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This will only be a minor aspect, but I did read a thing a few years ago where small firms doing physical products use them and run their entire business from them, because they can expand and contract their 'warehouse' space as and when, and many also have much of the amenities you'd expect of a co-working space like wifi and a coffee machine, so they can do the admin part there as well.

2025-04-08 08:33:38 UTC

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And we are assuming that these eliminated roles were actually not helping, and it's not just Streeting cutting for the sake of cutting.

2025-04-08 08:32:03 UTC

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Now, are the NHS running that facility or is it another private form?

2025-04-04 21:57:47 UTC

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The penny may have dropped, but not as much as the dollar!
[booing and hissing from the audience]

2025-03-24 16:00:56 UTC

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Time for me to once again push that petition I set up to encourage them to do so
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/708932

2025-03-15 15:14:58 UTC

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Now is probably a good time to mention that my Government Petition for them to embrace crowd investment went live this week:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/708932
Reeves' fiscal rules are based on ideology, not pragmatism, so it's unlikely they'll take this on, but I think putting The People slightly more in charge of how much is borrowed and where might at least give the wriggle room that if the public become unhappy with how much the Government are borrowing, they can simply stop lending it.

2025-03-11 01:16:20 UTC

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I've got a feeling being the ex-BoE governor might count against him.
When the right are constantly banging on about an 'Elite', fielding not only someone who was the head of a central bank- that of *another nation*, mind- feels a lot like doing their campaigning for them.

2025-03-07 13:26:51 UTC

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"...well, not that shocked."

2025-03-07 09:29:51 UTC

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It's almost as if they never had any intention to actually do anything with GB Energy in the first place, or something.

2025-03-06 10:52:23 UTC

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Was this song written in response to Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division?

2025-03-03 10:06:00 UTC

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Didn't they already confirm that the reforms are just going to be cuts and punishments?
I *do* know the main people they've been consulting on writing them is a think tank set up by Iain Duncan-Smith- not a name I'd connect to humane and compassionate.

2025-02-26 09:38:11 UTC

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..so, DOGE-level wrecking for wrecking's sake?
https://files.mastodonapp.uk/media_attachments/files/114/069/515/999/518/362/original/e6ef1c952427162a.jpg