Today's discussion about the news
Comments
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Since when did we start to accept prolonged and calculated decidaction to outright falsehood as a political misdemeanor?
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I mean, for ages but I feel a certain threshold was crossed when BoJo was elected in a landslide victory.
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Politicians have always 'bent the truth' to suit their narrative, but never before (as far as I'm aware) have UK politicians been so ready to lie about easily disprovable statistics (and been repeatedly rebuked for doing so, and been unwilling to issue corrections), and used department civil servants and official channels to spread downright lies.
If I'm wrong, I'd suspect the main exceptions would be during armed conflict, e.g. Suez and Iraq war. But what's new (in means and degree) is the use of Twitter to spread propaganda under the guise of official announcements from departments. It feels like a sea change, distinct from the "Official sources suggest that.." previously.
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Blair was often called Bliar. It's hardly a new feature of politics.
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Saw this on the news this morning and the first thing I thought was how it was straight out of the Trump playbook
Wilier Izoard XP0 -
also was her cowardice in using parliametary privilege to slander him
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny1 -
I think there's a difference between spin and never telling the truth. But I do accept the line can be blurred, and both sides can be very guilty.
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Ah, he was called that therefore it is so.
He was a lot better at it than this lot, up until the massaged wmd dossier, and that was his eventual undoing.
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Well take it as me blaming politicians misusing the medium then. All sides are using it, and before then all sides would use official or unofficial 'sources', but the use of Twitter through official accounts (whether that's a minister's official account or of a Ministry itself) to spread lies or blatant propaganda is a step change IMHO.
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As ever I think it is a mirror rather than much else. The appetite is clearly there for this nonsense stuff. Flat Esther’s are up etc.
The Great Recession was really severe and because we’re better at governance than 90 years it didn’t result in the sort of economic apocalypse it did in the Great Depression but plainly we’ve seen some fairly major reverberations and the expected political polarisation.
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OK, election leaflets too. Anything that bypasses any sort of pre-publication scrutiny for lying. It's really not OK.
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I've just fallen off my chair in surprise.
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Good!
People need to learn from this. Record keeping may be a waste of time, most of the time, but it can also be crucial.
Lesson learned from a client early in my career. "If it's not in black and white then it never happened."
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
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From what old Etonians report you wouldn’t believe there was any care offered there hence why it’s cheaper.
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This is well know. Very, very well known.
Social work, in particular fostering and adoption, is woefully under funded at local council level. There is a desperate need for foster carers and kinship carers. But councils skimp on staff to recruit carers and also skimp on what they pay to foster carers. This means faced with the option, foster carers go with charitable agencies (many of which are now actually owned by venture capital), to get paid more. And who can blame them?
But there is a statutory duty of councils to house children.
So the efforts to save costs at the front end means councils have no option, in order to fulfill their statutory duty, but to then pay the private agencies and, if placements cannot be found, children's homes (which are a last resort).
It is a tour de force of folly, whereby saving money costs more, and my wife has sold the numbers on several occasions to councils. However they inevitably flinch a year or so later and refuse to match the private agencies.
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For all the times we laugh at N.Korea's failures...
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Buried in the article is that Trident has an around 1% technical failure rate.
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True, but two failures in a row. Looking on the bright side it may inadvertently prevent armageddon.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
Separated by 8 years?
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There have been a lot of reports on how decrepit trident is for a while now. Not just the missiles but the submarines being used far longer than operationally sustainable
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Why do a showy test launch of something you're never going to actually use? It can only reduce its perceived value as a deterrent.
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Glib. What in your mind wears out on these things?
I feel sure that conversations are being had in wood panelled rooms, and that a few tens of millions are earmarked to test a couple more. Someone is also probably checking the troubleshooting guide.
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where does it say1%?
it reports the claim that trident is...
'"most reliable weapons system in the world" having completed more than 190 successful tests'...but it does not say these were all uk tests, does it include usa tests too? nor does it say how many unsuccessful tests there were, nor which trident variant(s) were being tested
fwiw other reports give the trident d5 failure rate as c. 5-6%, previous versions higher
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
They should give that sub a coat of paint for appearances sake at least
- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
Okay, 5 or 6 percent. Is that a lot? How does it compare to other intercontinental ballistic missile performance. I don't subscribe to Which.
It is inferred that this is worldwide. At £17M a pop, 190 tests is £3Bn.
Also the inference seems to be that the UK is abitshit at using or maintaining them.
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Finger is pointed at the U.S. suppliers.
The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0
