I’m struggling to see the issue with that. Surely it helps spice up the race a bit? A chance for the lesser teams to have a moment in the spotlight? After all, they’ve probably spent the majority of the race doing their best but essentially fighting over places where there are no points. To see them given the opportunity to have a bit of flat out racing towards the end of the race adds something interesting / another dimension. In reality though, not sure how many teams might actually do that – but at least it would be an option and give them something positive to fight for?

I think the dropping of the point for fastest lap is an odd one. I don’t have a problem with it as a thing but what they should do is allow whoever scores the fastest lap to keep the point and not just restrict it to the top 10. That always felt like a bit of a contrived / ill thought through idea.

I read First World War by Martin Gilbert earlier this summer. Essentially he followed the war chronologically in what felt like a pretty neutral way. Brought home the utter senseless waste of life during that war. Fascinating seeing some of the characters from later political life turning up through the recounting as well. It’s a chunky book but worth the read if you want an appreciation of what was happening and the chronology.

I wonder if there’s a higher rate of sex pests among the money+power lot than the general population?

I honestly don’t think so. The money and fame just allows them better resources to cover it up. It depresses me a little, at times, how there appear to be so many men that just seem to feel that women are objects for their pleasure. Chattels. Lesser humans. Just look at most war situations: One of the first things that seems to happen is some soldiers feel it’s ok to just rape and abuse women and children. They don’t really have money or wealth. Afghanistan currently and the ruling Taliban. What a horrific place for women right now. Most of the civil wars and ethnic cleansing that went on across Africa. Rape, abuse and torture was there in abundance. And this is just scratching the surface.

Currently have a Mondeo estate (diesel) and keep my eyes open for a replacement for it as we are now up to 120,000 miles in it. However, newer ones currently appear to be as rare as hen’s teeth plus we know that the supply isn’t going to be getting too plentiful as the Mondeo is going to be killed pretty soon anyway. Given I don’t know how long we will be sticking with this one we had the timing chain changed at its last service earlier this summer. If I had the cash I would be tempted by either the Merc C class estate or the E class estate. Maybe that’s just an unfounded soft spot I have for them. I would also consider another Passat but they too seem to be fairly rare. And a bit more costly than a Mondeo. Same with the Audi A6 – if we are going to hit all of the STW stereotypes. ;)

How quick do you need it? I have a Surface Laptop which is not a bad device – prefer it to my work Dell. Got it with a few hundred quid off around last year’s black friday. They’re not cheap but ended up getting the 15″ one as it was the same price as the 13″. Quite like the Dell XPS machines but they also get quite pricey quite quickly.

For what it’s worth – I can’t agree with those that didn’t like Ministry of Ungentlemanly War. We found it great fun and perfect popcorn entertainment. Very much in the vein of Rogue Heroes – hardly surprising. And yes, it is based on a true story in as much as there was an operation called Postmaster and it did target the ships in that port. A few of the characters existed (not all of them in that place though). But a hugely entertaining piece of cinematic escapism. Loved it. :)

In line with the classic STW method of question answering, I’ll echo the other comments for the Jabra conference speakers. I love them and they are far, far more comfortable and reasonable to use than having headphones or in-ears on. Small, reliable and pretty much bullet proof. If you are working from home then I can’t see why you wouldn’t go for something like that. For music duties I have my Edifier speakers connected via Bluetooth.
The number of people I see on Teams calls who have difficulties with Bluetooth headphones gives me plenty of reasons to not even consider them as an option. When in the office I use the standard, wired headphones we got issued. They’re fine for short use but I’d not be happy if I had to wear them for more than a few hours a day, every day.

“If those of you in the office today see four new starters, please make them welcome. They are on Jen’s team”.

Entire team:

“Who is Jen?”

Surely it would have been one person saying “Who is Jen” followed by a variety of +1 messages or a ?or ?on the original message ;)

Not sure where you live but I have found lour local bedding shop an excellent place with a range of mattresses and good prices. Really friendly and helpful guys (brothers) who run it too.

https://abingdonbeds.co.uk/

Funnily enough, while chatting to the mechanics we have our cars serviced at last week they were all muttering “as long as you steer clear of the Ford EcoBoost engines…” They have clearly seen quite a few problem cars with that engine.

Not quite what market segment the Nissan Cedric was targeted at.

Or, indeed, where Ford was going with the Escort. ;)

“First flight out of the country 6am more like.”

Unlikely I would have thought. Unless he has lost his seat as well. If he has held his seat then he will have to resign his seat and step down before leaving, surely.

My first thought was that the site had gone into meltdown as everyone piled in with election day fever :)

I liked Robert Galbraith’s books until (irony) she came out as a massive transphobe.

Definitely not the thread for this conversation but I really don’t think calling her a transphobe is either true or helpful. I thought you were better than that.

I’d echo what teaandbiscuits says – Jack Reacher series is very easy to read and, personally, I find them hugely enjoyable. And there’s plenty of them to read. If you get a chance I would probably try and read them in order. It doesn’t matter massively but some of the books do have nods to previous books. I can also recommend the Peter James “Dead” series featuring DI Grace. ITV have done a few of the books (Grace) but I find the books are still much better than the TV interpretation of them. I also find Mark Billingham, Stephen Leather, Linwood Barclay and Simon Kernick and Steve Cavanagh very good books to read. I used to find Grisham ok but after reading King of Torts I found they all went downhill pretty quickly and most his books just feel like someone phoning it in.

For non-fiction I thought Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari a pretty engaging read – even if I’m unsure about some of his assertions / conclusions. The follow up book was no so good though IMHO.

They’ve been doing some promo video work and pictures of this in town the last couple of days. At a casual glance it looks very smart. Not the greatest of names though!

https://www.mgcyberster.co.uk/

Like a number of England games these days, that was horrible to watch. The opening 20 minutes or so was good and encouraging and then we spent the rest of the game playing useless, slow, pointless passing, drifting ever further back. I don’t understand why we feel the need to play so slowly and underhit the passes which eventually ends up putting the defence under pressure to the point we either concede a goal or hoof it up the pitch. I get the idea that you want to pass the ball around a bit to try and draw the opposition out of position and create space but we do it so slowly that it never actually pans out that way. Ends up making it a frustrating watch rather than an enjoyable experience. Contrast that with, say, Germany in the opening game where the passes were crisper, players were moving at pace and the defence were being pulled all over the place. Or Serbia in the same game as us. Quicker passing and changes of pace left our defence exposed. Thankfully Serbia didn’t have the nous in that game to do anything with it. Hope things improve in the next match!

Stop threatening me with a good time and start a party already.

🤣

biuking catastrophe – so £15000 pa for two junior school kids – still not affordable for middle earners is it?  1/3 – 1/2 of two middle earners disposable income ish?

Where did I say junior school kids? And where did I mention 2 kids? I’m not arguing that it’s easily affordable – was merely pointing out that not all private schools cost a King’s ransom. On the other hand, we have 2 public schools in the town (one for boys and one for girls) that cost considerably more. Plus Radley College nearby where the fees are very definitely not for the middle income earners. (Radley College is currently £17k per TERM!! 🫨)

After all that, I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of middle earners are not the type to be sending their kids to private schools anyway. Maybe those with only 1 kid might make that sacrifice (I know a couple that did). But it’s also fair to say there is a significant number of people in this country who are earning above that £30,000 middle earner income – clearly enough to keep most of the public schools in pupils.

Shit schools are a political choice

I think you’re going to have to explain that one for us, because as a statement that doesn’t stand up.

And I don’t think that comparing your school in the 70’s is especially relevant to the debate today. I would say that most state schools were better in the 70’s than they are now in comparison to now. Smaller population, newer schools, a lot of comprehensives that were only just out of being grammar schools, fewer pulls on the national budgets, education and local council funding etc etc.

I feel this is a bit of a rabbit hole in the overall election debate. There are bigger issues to address than whether private schools should VAT, IMHO. But it does highlight why it’s hard for any individual party to find agreement from all about their policies.

No-one has said why private schools shouldn’t have to charge VAT

I’m not really sure. As others have said, by charging VAT on fees it will drive the costs for parents up and will consequently take some parents out of the market. Which may well reduce the numbers in the school. Which reduces the school income and consequently on any income HMRC are likely to make out it. Plus they will then be able to start reclaiming VAT on stuff they currently don’t. As a policy, sure, it gets the vote and approval of those who against private schools. But will there be much of a net gain to the tax take? I suspect not. And those that then do take their kids out of private schools, how many of them will then spend some of that “saved” money on private tuition – something that will have zero impact on raising the standards of the state schools that the kids are now in. Plus extra kids that the local authority are now paying for that they previously weren’t.

My entirely unscientific survey of the one private school I know of in the vicinity suggested around £8k per term for someone in years 7-11.

One school in our vicinity it is £7.3k for one child per year for years 7-11. So, yeah, it varies. :)

How much are these lessor private schools fees? I’ll bet well out of reach for the average person – you know middle earners on £30 000ish PA

Don’t really know. Possibly somewhere around the £8k – £10k. And that is probably easily within reach of a couple of middle earners – if it’s something they feel strongly enough about committing to.

It’s also worth pointing out that not all private / public schools are either wealthy or elitist. I get that when they are mentioned most people immediately think of the Charterhouses and Eatons of this world but there are quite a few private schools that are nowhere near that league. For a number of parents, they are disillusioned with the state school system and want to provide what they feel is the best possible educational foundation for their kids. And if they can afford it, why not? I understand the socialist dream of not having private / public schools but I don’t believe getting rid of them is the answer. And poorly performing state schools are not rubbish because private schools exist. And if we go down this road, where do we stop on freedom of choice to spend your own, earned money? Abolish private health care? Remove private cars because of their pollution and mandate everyone either walks, cycles or uses public transport? Only approved goods can be purchased? Do away with all luxury goods because it’s usually only the rich that can afford to buy them?

The other factor is that at £50k your NI contribution goes down to 2%. So combined tax and NI of 42%.

Which was a change introduced not all that long ago IIRC. Previously, once you got to the higher rate tax band you didn’t pay any NI on the additional earnings

The thing is – tax is an emotive topic. As most are saying, there is an acknowledgement that the wealthier should shoulder a bigger burden “as they can afford it”. But we have no agreement on where that boundary is. It’s also not as simple as deciding that those who have a lot of wealth in, say property, should be taxed on that wealth because, in a lot of cases, it’s only paper wealth. It could be a substantial property that, perhaps, they inherited. Or that they bought in better times and were lucky. But that wealth does nothing for them day-to-day. They aren’t earning money from it – as they aren’t selling it. I am fortunate in that I currently earn a reasonable salary. My wife is on a zero hours contract and earns little more than pocket money. For me personally, while I believe we should have better (make that functioning) public services and that I am ok with the principle that those who earn more should pay more I also feel that I’m already doing that. I despair at the waste of public money through either inefficiency, stupidity, dogmatism, the general failure to find good administration or a combination of all of them. It’s easy for those on lower incomes to say that those on a higher salary should pay a higher proportion because, like most situations like that, they know it doesn’t affect them. It’s someone else paying it. We do need a complete overhaul of the taxation system to make it simpler, more efficient and fairer. I don’t know exactly what that looks like though!

Conversley, she would exploited the photo opp for all it was worth, dropping in by parachute probably.

Hmmm, not so sure she would right now. Even for her it must register that there could be a high probability of it not opening.

Hit Man (new Richard Linklater) – watched yesterday on Netflix, very enjoyable bit of fluff 🙂

Agree. Saw it on Friday and it was enjoyable fluff. As was Family Plan on Apple TV, which we saw a few weeks ago.

Just started on Tokyo Vice S1. Good watch so far, if a little bit of a slow burner.

I can imagine the one thing most of us would be able to agree on is that there is no single, perfect electoral system for a democracy. We all know the limitations of FPTP but at least we understand it and we have enough experience of it that it sort of makes some logical sense. It’s easy to find its faults when we look at the actual voting numbers but that in itself is not really telling the complete picture as those numbers don’t take account of where those people are. There is possibly some room for PR – but what flavour of PR do you want? Whichever one you go for you will find some proportion of the electorate that will dislike it.  I also wish our ballot papers had an explicit “none of the above” or “exercising my right not to vote for any of the proposed candidates” so that we had a positive outlet for those that are exasperated with the current political system. That could help motivate those who feel that way and end up not being bothered to go and vote as they would only be spoiling their ballot paper. And save those who do go and spoil their papers by giving them a positive option with which to express their sentiment.

This is going to be a tricky election as I feel quite conflicted. I genuinely don’t know who to vote for. None of the parties are particularly geared up to bring the transformational changes and improvements that we need as those are probably not catchy enough sound bites to motivate voters. For starters I think we need a complete overhaul of the taxation system, the NHS, social services and how local government is funded and supported. These alone are massive programmes that will take years to define, plan and implement. That’s before we start talking about infrastructure, energy, housing, employment and immigration. And those are just the big ticket items. As a nation we could and should be doing so much better and we deserve / need so much more than the large number of muppets we are currently burdened with in parliament. It feels too tribal and it needs a more constructive and collaborative approach. Someone needs to let some grown ups in!

Not Netflix, obviously, but we’ve just watched both series of Kin. Very good to watch and not too many plot holes or (usual for dramas / films) “why TF did they do that??” moments. Although, having said that, I believe series 1 has just dropped on Netflix. We watched both in iPlayer

Just finished Good cop, bad cop by Simon Kernik. I liked it. But then I like all the books of his that I have read :)

I think those calling George Russell a whinging cock bag are being a bit harsh. Knowing the speeds of the F1 cars at that part of the circuit with you being in the position of lying defenceless in the middle of the track I don’t see a problem in trying to make it clear to anyone listening that this is a dangerous situation.

And yes, on first watch I couldn’t help thinking  that Alonso was definitely pulling something. With nothing clearly wrong with the car he braked noticeably earlier and was obviously trying to get GR to brake harder, lose momentum and allow him to escape up the road. Definitely “dark arts” thinking but clumsily executed. Or rather, executed a bit too heavily that probably then panicked GR a bit into over-reacting. Made all the more obvious in the post-race interviews where he was trying to talk about managing issues in the car and not knowing who was around him or where they were behind him. Yeah, right Fernando. You knew exactly where GR was – hard not to know given that he’s been on your gear box for the previous 5 laps or more. Anyway, another lesson for GR – and yes, he does seem to have had a few lapses over the last few seasons.

Best thing though was seeing Max go out. At least we’ve lanced the boil of him winning every race this season nice and early. :)

Watched the first episode of the Gentlemen last night. I quite enjoyed it – amusing, stylishly filmed and complete nonsense. So, yeah, I enjoyed it. Mrs BC less so though.

I noticed yesterday also that American Fiction has dropped on Prime. Missed it in the cinema but it looked like a film worth watching.

Done a few Trail Break rides in the past (the the Chiltern Trail ride with my son a few years ago which was a great ride) https://www.trailbreak.co.uk/

And another one near us that’s a decent event is Up to No Good https://www.uptonogood.org.uk/ Which is a really well run local event with a range of rides available for all the family.

Echo what @imnotamused mentioned ^^. The Questars events are fabulous although they are adventure races so more than just MTB events. I love them and miss not having done one for a while!

+1 and please can someone tell my Dad?

Are you my son?? ;)

Went to an independent audiologist a couple of years ago and it confirmed that my hearing was …. impaired. Offered a trial but the aids they work with are a bit spendy. Supposed to be good and tuneable etc. Also encouraged me not to leave it too long as, apparently, the older you get the harder it is for your brain to adjust to the aids. Went a year later for a comparison test and, yup, they were a bit worse. Generally I’m not too bad but loud background noise is a bit of a killer. Recommended aid is the Audeo Paradise from Phonak. While I think I will benefit (Mrs BC certainly does!) I’m still reticent to jump on that treadmill though – the master of procrastination!

I said I could help with forms but they want to do it through a solicitor as they ‘want it done right’, so solicitor who did their wills is coming to visit them next Thursday.

Genuinely, they do not need to do this. It was the battle we were having with my mum for the last few years after we kept suggesting it was something that they should definitely consider (both parents are in the their 80s). Going via the solicitor was going to take the cost over £1000 and she felt that was too much. Finally, this year, due to Dad’s worsening dementia and her having a few unexplained falls and us showing that the only costs you need to pay are for registering the POA applications (no need for solicitors as they are so straightforward) she finally relented. Brilliant news and it came in handy a lot quicker than she expected when dealing with a situation for Dad a few weeks ago when he was incapacitated for a bit and a medical decision was needed. Much relief all round.

Also, no harm in making the application for “jointly and severally” as it means it’s already in place in case something happens with your parents and you suddenly become incapacitated. Adjusting them after the POA has been set up will cost extra at that point. Costs nothing to add more than one person when going through the initial POA.

We’re trying to get our whole HSCN IP range configured as the boundary, so it would encompass all our Practices, our ICB office, and our VPN subnets, but it’s convoluted. Doing similar at their Trust would cover that lab without having to essentially create a single device exception. And again, if Smartcards are in use or they have a FIDO token, there’s no need for it anyway.

That’s not really the ideal way to do it – certainly if you are using Entra / the MS ecosystem. It’s a bit like a modern interpretation of the old “castle wall perimeter – network is the security boundary” way of working. The ideal would be using things like risk based authentication decisions by having access to machine heath and compliance as part of the conditional access rules. As we all keep agreeing too, there are other options besides Authenticator. A security token is more secure or you could use Certificate Based Auth (not so easy or flexible to roll out).
It’s also not a good idea to be excluding specific machines from MFA. It’s a bit like building a castle with 10 foot thick walls but only building those walls on 3 sides of the castle.
It’s a big, bad, scary world out there in terms of cyber warfare and threat and it would be handy if those who are not into IT at least recognised that many IT departments are under significant demands to bring security to the company and the decisions are mostly made with the intent to strengthen and protect the company rather than to upset the non-IT literate.

Like many on this thread, I just don’t really understand the belligerence to using your phone for MFA – if it’s appropriate. If you are working in spaces where you can’t take your phone or it’s not accessible, then the MFA programme should have done their job properly to provide an alternative such as a YubiKey (other security devices are available) or something like an infiniband if the workplace doesn’t like things that look like USB drives. People that cite “not wanting work to have access to my data” is just ignorance and are using to try and justify them not installing an app. As toby mentioned – you should not be using SMS at all. Sure, it’s slightly better than not having any MFA at all, but barely. I believe there are at least a couple of Govt departments that have banned SMS following one or more incidents with SMS last year. It’s fundamentally about increasing security and making it harder for your account to be hacked. I wonder, of the people against it, how they would feel if their company got compromised via their account because they refused to accept MFA? I know that their account compromise wouldn’t be the sole reason the company got compromised / hacked / ransomwared and that IT would have a lot of questions to answer but by refusing MFA you are creating an opportunity that can be removed.

2) Buy MS Office properly for £££££££££££…lol, don’t do this.

In the grand scheme of things I wouldn’t say that Office is £££££. The annual subscription model is either £60 for a personal subscription or £70 for a family subscription where you can install the office apps on up to 6 machines. It will be a bit pricier of you want the “permanent” license and that will only cover you for the current version. You won’t get the upgrades or newer versions with that approach. Nor the extra OneDrive storage – if that’s important to you.
I would be hesitant about using the grey sites though, personally.