User Profile

[jamesbrown]

Most agreeable of them....

[jamesbrown]

Rarely bitten. Good example was interrailing in first summer of uni with friends in crappy Italian "hotels" full of mossies - I was almost never bitten whereas one or two of my friends, invariably staying in the same room, were always hammered.

[jamesbrown]

Nice one, work is work, back in the game.

[jamesbrown]

Yes, it's all of those things and it is, indeed, quite sad....

[jamesbrown]

In the end, it's the same calculation. There's a funding envelope and hence an amount that need to be saved. The potential savings are enumerated and evaluated as part of a prioritisation strategy and a project is not cut simply because costs are escalating, rather that the costs have become too high...

[jamesbrown]

Yes, further up the chain. The extent to which the relevant MoS is made aware of specific decisions like this is a grey area, although it is implausible that the MoS would not have been aware in this particular instance via a "red risk" register, since this is a prominent landmark and UNESCO...

[jamesbrown]

Oh, and you could perhaps blame them for either being ignorant of the political consequences of funding choices or perhaps "clever" about those political realities. I have been involved in these sort of funding decisions in my own area of research and, while decisions are based on cost vs....

[jamesbrown]

It isn't £2.8m out of £10bn, the £10bn is the total funding across all research areas/councils in 2029/30 (UKRI is composed of many research councils), but this is within one funding area/council and the £2.8m is the current operating cost (which is increasing). Details aside, my point here is that...

[jamesbrown]

I would bear in mind that these funding priorities are set by domain experts (i.e., career academics/researchers from the relevant domains), so it's more about the overall funding envelope (lack thereof) than any particular decision being made in an arbitrary way by some "forgetful quango"....

[jamesbrown]

We are not a serious country, we're an old people's home and we've handed the keys and a clown suit to PwC to manage it for us. Until we elect serious politicians that are able to make highly controversial decisions (including during times of extreme crisis, like 2008 and 2020), which mitigate public...

[jamesbrown]

You're starting to sound a bit like a twitter bot

Leave the conspiracy theories to caminito/oliverson....

[jamesbrown]

People are worried about it because it's an existential tail risk at worst (and let's remember, our nuclear capability is in a pretty dire state) and a massive economic hit at best, which can be deterred against if you have a strong and visible conventional capability (including evolving conventional...

[jamesbrown]

Agree on the above, decent appointment by Burnham - quite like Healey (as a non-Labour voter, in general). Would be willing to pay more tax for sensible stuff like defence.

[jamesbrown]

Unwinding of the Chancellor Millipede short positions....

[jamesbrown]

He will struggle to be more hated than Starmer. His policies will almost certainly be pretty tulipe for a majority here that prefer to keep more of their money and there are not good signs that he will take any politically difficult decisions either, such as ditching the pensions triple lock, increasing...

[jamesbrown]

Well, curiosity and experience are somewhat separate things, but it would depend on the nature of the work and risk involved (which is why this thread often ends up with useless generalisations). To be clear, there's value in all three of education, experience and curiosity, in general, and that should...

[jamesbrown]

I think there's truth in both, actually. A degree is not worthless, it provides foundational knowledge that you often will not pick up (as easily/quickly/correctly) if you experience it indirectly or try to learn it yourself. At the same time, for literally any trade/profession that ever existed, caring...

[jamesbrown]

Not to completely dissuade you from a B2B relationship, especially because my experience is in the other direction (i.e. U.S. clients, rather than subbing work to the US), but I think your compliance risk goes to the moon with this approach. You could realistically create a PE or disguised employment...

[jamesbrown]

I literally would've put money on you responding with something like this, mal

I can't see myself voting for the Tories while Badenoch is leading and Mel Stride is shadow chancellor. Badenoch just isn't very well suited for leadership IMHO - the pantomime of PMQs is totally unimportant...

[jamesbrown]

I would like to see a right-of-centre party that is not the Tory party (who can feck right off) with a credible plan for gov't, but the Farage clownshoe is definitely not that thing, just as the Polanski clownshoe is not that thing for lefties. Farage is a good campaigner, but just doesn't have the...