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[malvolio]

Totally agree. Putin is failing in Ukraine because he is meeting strong (and apparently totally unexpected) resistance.

Defence is not a strategy, it is a basic necessity if you are to stand up to aggressors of any kind. Sun Tzu had it right - the best defence is to win without needing...

[malvolio]

Agreed

Also quite pleased at how many deadheads have been binned from key places in Starmer's cabinet...

[malvolio]

I didn't, but it's nice to see your alternative view...

So what you are saying is that the capitalism that created Britain is wrong and we should have stuck with feudalism?

The failures of the various denationalised industries and services are down to a lack of effective enforceable...

[malvolio]

Yes, taxes went up. They were spent in useful directions though, unlike today.

Housing is a whole other mess though, with multiple causes. Right to Buy is only one element of that.

But enough of the theory. What did Thatcher destroy?...

[malvolio]

We would have been in the same position as Greece and Italy were at that time. What happened was we went from no money (literally) and no industry to having paid off the national debt. Yes, getting there hurt a lot of people but the government were very clear that was a necessity and, unlike anybody...

[malvolio]

There was a post on FB earlier today listing the things that changed under Thatcher's government, comparing where they started to where they finished. Rather blew a hole in comrade Burnham's fantasy critique of the last 40-odd years.

We're going to be led by someone who lost to both Millipede...

[malvolio]

Sold ours to these guys, for a sensible price. Must be one near you...

[malvolio]

Sandersons owner Keith set up PRG many years ago, and then split off various businesses underneath it. I knew the old management team very well, all now long departed. Oddly enough I never got any work from them for many years, largely because the people in my area of expertise were more interested...

[malvolio]

Given almost all traffic crashes are caused by human error (a very small percentage are down to vehicle failure, hence the official switch to RTColision from RTAccident) anything that takes human error out of the equation has to be a good move. The real fear at present is that the error-free autonomous...

[malvolio]

Because AI isn't actually intelligent and would have the river marked as "Not land" on the maps it would be using to determine its course of action? All those nice long straight roads would vastly outweigh a water landing. And, of course, it wouldn't care (or even realise) that the roads would...

[malvolio]

Worth remembering that any Agile environment will sit inside a waterfall plan at some point the in the programme hierarchy. with the possible exception of work around rapid changes to localised live environments. Even then, someone will have defined the overall parameters....

[malvolio]

You miss the point, as Sully pointed out to the enquiry. You could fly back to the airport and land provided you did all the right things immediately. It took him and the co-pilot about 20 seconds to work out what went wrong by which time it was too late. The pilots who made the theoretical landing...

[malvolio]

PRG are a different matter of course. They are a big group of companies, been around Bristol for many years - anyone remember Sandersons?

[malvolio]

Start digging around their companies house returns. Doesn't look too promising; for one thing the company is listed as active but returns accounts as dormant. They are wholly owned and controlled by another company, Precision Resource Group Ltd, and appear to have total assets of £150 and no staff....

[malvolio]

Just list the successes, all 24 of them out of 92. Then look at how many are actually taking us forward economically. Also quite a few are actually about establishing or removing stuff, not delivery of outcomes.

But to be fair, I suspect most governments have a similar record at half t...

[malvolio]

Well yes, I do agree to some extent. We are going to be presented with a list of political pygmies when we really need some statesmen with a proper vision of the way forward. It is telling that with over 400 MPs, Labour have to import a serial failure to take over as PM. And the popular vote is either...

[malvolio]

It also depends which you think represent progress towards building the economy and which are union inspired regressions to the 70s....

Tax receipts of £331bn vs welfare costs of £333bn are factual. So is spending £100bn a year in loan intetest, funded by - guess what - more borrowing....

[malvolio]

Fair enough. Not that many actually delivered, and some of those are open to interpretation. For one example, net immigration is down but that is as much about increaed emigration as anything. Similary NHS queues are down because 600k appointments have cancelled and people, such as my other half,...

[malvolio]

To be fair, Badenoch has laid out a fairly sensible vision of her likely manifesto, but I do wish some of her shadows were more obvious. It does amuse me that people see "the Tories" as a brand; it's becoming clear that what they are now under her leadership is nothing like what we suffered...

[malvolio]

Who knows... The whole idea is a risk assessment, without knowing what criteria are important or relevant.

There are spaces on the form for "any other relevant information". You decide if that was significant....