If Johnson comes back I predict an election in the autumn. He’ll want to go while he’s in his honeymoon period with all the misplaced positivity behind him.

Nah, it’ll be the usual trick of jam tomorrow, and if only he’d not been ousted last year we’d not be in this mess as he’d have saved the day singlehandedly, so stick with him for another two years and the sunny uplands will be in sight.

So, at one of the parties that wasn’t a party couples were properly at it (I’m going to the wrong parties)… “this is the most unsocially distanced party in the UK right now“ …and paperwork was shredded ahead of the enquiry. No one will be surprised. Links later if I can be bothered… unless others post some first.

This will be the ultimate downfall of the idiot – either now, or heaven forbid, the loons work out how to get him back to No.10 – the constant dripfeed of this kind of stuff, and I’m 100% sure there are boatloads of this kinda gossip still unearthed.

I know there’s an argument for him ‘filling the vacuum’ before the press just ‘made stuff up’ about him, but was he daft enough to think the press wouldn’t cherry pick and misrepresent excepts from his very own book against him to make their own points anyway?

I always felt that Tesla was just a physical embodiment of the dot com boom. Hyped to the nth degree, possibly sensible stuff under the hoods but hugely over valued.

You think he is totally unaware of his incredible privilege?

Well, we have a PM who thinks homeless people might be in banking, so it potentially a thing.

We used to work in a big open three floor office with a central atrium. Poor guy keeled over with a heart attack in the atrium.
The beeping of the defibrillator running for so long trying to resuscitate him was sad and grim especially as we couldn’t really move everyone out of their desks.

After the cold war the military realised we had overestimated many Soviet capabilities. It seems we have repeated this mistake again. Their intel seems low tech and slow, plus very few capabilities live up to their claims.

The Russians are juws the practice – its the Chinese we’re trying to match at the moment, though possibly they are doing the same thing with hype versus reality.

Oh, I’d forgotten you can download stuff – premium user so should have that ability.

I think that spreadsheets/excel are my only knowledge black hole!

Thats a good gap to plug, and I’d start there. Probably plenty of free onlione tutorials. Always found it helps to do stuff with Excel thats useful to you – family finances etc. and learn that way.

And yes, you could well know 80% of a basic ICT Course already.

Suppose you’d better throw Teams/Zoom into the mix too – and use Outlook to set up a Teams (or Zoom) call

I’m guessing the ‘IT Skills’ mentioned are likely to be the basics like Word and Excel, browsers, knowing your way around a (windows) machine in terms of how to run programs, use file explorer etc., I’d be surprised if its knowing how to code.

Your data analysis module could be literally making some graphs using data in excel, though you’d hope it’ll be a little more advanced, but possibly not if the IT side isn’t a requesite for students.

I’d say, probably go fairly braod – know the main bits in a laptop – processor, memmory etc. as concepts. If you want do some ‘programming’ and you say you’ve okay with Word then I’d be tempted to have a look at HTML which is what you use to build web pages, as as it’s most basic its just Word but instead of highlighting something to be, say, bold, you say ‘start being bold here’ and ‘stop being bold now’ etc.

Python is usally the language of choice when starting if you want pukka coding.

We were told in no uncertain terms than the current government do not want children and young people equipped with such critical thinking

Heaven forbid the plebs get told how to work out that the Tories are screwing them over.

Where does he go from here though?

Now we’ve got the clickbait stuff the next Netflix/interview/book/rant can’t exactly be about his favourite knitting pattern. He sounds like he’s just gotta keep throwing potentially more and more sordid details out there to keep relevant.

Depending what he’s promised the rebels, might have been in the Democrats interests to vote him in sooner.

Thats the problem isn’t it. These fruit loops are going to get themselves on some fairly important committees and immediately decide the most important thing to do is investigate Hunter Bidens ‘selfies’ or something.

Aye, but £8/m for 24Gb/m is rather a lot more than £40 once for 24Gb expiring in two years, which is what I paid Vodafone way back when.

Sorry, I’ve completely misread that!!!

Sunak has zero gravitas and is perhaps the most patronising politician I’ve ever seen. I reckon Boris will be back by the time of the next election. The tories are not going to let Sunak take them to electoral oblivion, because that’s what he’s going to do.

Sunak has until the local elections in May. All bets will be off after that if it goes the expected way for him. Though to be fair, BJ might not be an MP by then if the ethics committee see fit so that’ll muck the cunning plan up a bit.

Probably the only chance of a general election this year too – the Tories deciding that they’d rather loose by 100 seats now than get beaten by 200 seats the following year.

Got any of those Young Driver places near you? Could get your under 17 year old a few miles under his/her belt before they even start on the road if its not birthday until June.

Smarty have 24gb for £8 or 30gb for a tenner, on a rolling monthly contract… IIRC they are EE under the covers. My youth has one in her mobile seems decent.

My default answer to these questions

Volumino or Roone running on a Rasperry Pi with a high quality DAC extension board (I use an IQAudio PI-DAC+. You can also get a class D Amo board and drive speakers directly from that should you want.

Only if you can actually get a Pi at the moment…

Pi 4, case,DAC board, a few cables, power supply, memory card etc. and you’re at a Wiim Mini in temrs of cost.

No really, the correct response is what b33k34 linked to above. Horrid things.

Even the Wagner mercenaries must be down to battle fodder convicts by now. Wonder what happened to that Chechen leaders sons he sent down to play soldiers?

Print one photo, then turn round the sheet and feed it back in when you print the next photo…

If these people suffer some financial distress, and these same houses come back on the market at reduced prices, I consider that a win.

I suspect there’ll be a fair amount of collateral damage to innocent homeowners too, would that be part of your ‘win’ too? Its not just going to be landlords hit you know.

Can’t even the stauchest MAGA feaks keeping a straight face when they are shown those ‘collectable’ cards! Even Steve Bannon was mocking him.

Must be grim being a Russian recruit dug in for the frozen winter in UKR only kitted out with a army issue t-shirt and flip flops knowing they are just chuck a gps guided HIMARS on you now and then. Russians are going to have to do something just to avoid that being the only statistic on the winter fight.

Superb gig with Michael Head and Red Elastic Band (lead singer from the Pale Fountains) last night. Certainly more, erm, sober than last time when he needed to be helped to his guitar…

RS700 is a flat bar road bike shifter. I use one with my 11sp 105.

If all Shimanos 11speed road levers use the same pull ratio then it’ll be fine.

Boris actually going to fight for his current seat, or hopeful of getting shifted to a more, erm, friendly reception somewhere else (Nadine Dories seat maybe)?

Its not five days for the first year or something is it?

Some of the new (DWP) contracts I looked after a while ago were a sliding scale. The old people were on 6mth full/6mths half, but the newer contracts were something like 2weeks full per year served, up to a max of six months (don’t quote me on the exact numbers).

I don’t think the issue comes down to the money for the solicitor, its possibly your state of mind at the time, bearing its your mother rather than, say, an uncle etc. If you’re reasonably intelligent/numerical then DIY is possible, deffo sounds like it’d be IHT400 you’ll be needing so ultimately if you’re also arranging funerals etc. too then I found it tough to get your head around.

The ‘tell us once’ is good, and there is a lot of stuff you’ll have to do anyway yourself, like register the death IIRC so bring along as much info then as there can do stuff like driving licences, council tax etc. etc. which I’m not sure solicotr would do (or if you do them they can’t charge you for…).

For those that say they’ve done it themselves without issue, be aware that there are 2 processes.

The IHT205 process can be completed online and is pretty straight forward for estates where there is unlikely to be a tax payment necessary.

The IHT400 is needed when affairs are more complex and/or there has been tax planning – there is likely to be an IHT payment necessary.

This, though to be fair one you get your head around the ‘add to the total in row 36 (page 2) to the total in row 302 (page 10)’ I didn’t find it too bad.

Whatever you do, even if its just the random ‘how much are the contents of the house worth?’ finger in the air figures you invent, make a note of them as you’ll no doubt need to reference them again.

surely it could be done digitally by now

and this runs an assumption you can afford a computer/mobile etc. or the ability to go to a secure place like a library to use theirs, so we’re back to the hit to poorer people.

Worked on voting systems and backend coding for elections for many years in a previous life. Its not broken. Its not 100% secure, as like people say, there is potential to vote if you know name/address but its remerkably efficient for all people at the moment.

Or, of course, Hamilton are swiss movements and have a good range, though possibly bit more than £300…

@alex – if you like Pilot style watches why not go for one of the original big German five – Laco – https://www.laco.de/en/watches/pilot-watches-basic – the ‘basics’ have a fairly, erm, basic Miyota movement (there is a rather nice quartz too, the Zurich) but thats par for the course at those prices. The finishing on the cases is superb, same as the more spendier/posher versions. You can pick the case size to fit you 39/42mm etc. and free engraving if you order through the. I’ve got the blue faced one as a everyday watch and I’m really impressed.

Soo tempted with one of these faux antique if I had a bit of spare cash…

Russia have mined the dam upstream haven’t they?

Just to answer Cougars question, yes, I think its improved my left handed scrawl as I find they glide easier over the paper as I’m in effect pushing the nib into the paper as a lefty, rather than dragging it as I would right handed.

Just never let anyone else use your fountain pen though as the nibs tend to aquire a bit of ‘memory’ to them (basically bend slightly to fit you).

TWSBI Ecos are a decent (reasonably) affordable one if you want a piston filler.

W00dster – seen the new Pelagos 39 from Tudor? Think that the next one one my list to have a serious look at. More modern BB58 take in titanium with a bit of that Brietling thrown in for good measure imho. Mmmmm

Don’t forget the mental amount the courier will also charge you to collect that small amount of VAT from you…

Roadmap:

Two more years of Tories and the impact Brexit is having (there report on the food standards checks on imports this week was appaling, will try and get a linky)
Labour win, I’m guessing first suggestion will be single market
People see the benefits
Inch closer to rejoining, but I can see if being another 10 years before a firm mandate.

Hopefully people like that tory donor have sensible dicsussions in the meantime.

Must be an earlier flight back to the Bahamas tmrw morning or something so he can keep on’serving his constituents ‘ from the beach.

Either he didn’t have the numbers or someone like Brady has clearly read him the memo about not rocking the boat and the damage he’d likely do if he came in then was promptly turfed out by the standards committee.

Win win really for him, unfortunately. He can just sit on the sidelines now when the Tories get stuffed at the election saying only he could have sorted it, whist getting all those highly paid speaking gigs in the meantime.

BJ won’t have read the party memo that they get the choice down to the two last remaining (hopefully sensible) prospects and the one with least votes then steps down. He know he’ll walk it with the actual membership so he won’t do the decent thing if he’s in 2nd place.

Was actually thinking last night it’s a shame they might get a ‘moderate’ in and probably start chipping away at that Labour lead, but this turn of events has cheered me right up.