ForenSix Opposition - Politics in the Soon To Be Former UK in Autumn 2020

The civil service is awash with people with amazing excel skills they learned doing they European Computer Driving Licence 20 years ago and has almost no-one who can find their way around a database.

*their

As a data engineer I'm pretty shocked they aren't at least using some kind of ingest into Azure > PowerBI setup tbh.

Having worked in parts of public sector I am not.

Not just a public sector problem tbh

the document that @maxcroser attaches seems in fact to say nothing abt excel or columns -- that's his added interpretation (and i think cheeky joke?)

not that this isn't an absurd fuck up, it's just not that particular absurd fuck up (or maybe it is but the document doesn't specifically say so)

The Mail is claiming that it was Excel-linked — they've solved it by splitting the files — and the numbers tapped out at exactly XFD which is a v. odd coincidence if it's not the case that they've been using columns for rows

pic.twitter.com/yeQlqVOPVF

— leckie (@verblet) October 5, 2020

If they are using any version of Excel after 2007 then the upper row count is 1,048,576. I wonder if that (+ 16,000 missing rows) ties in with the official counts?

Otherwise they hit 65,536 which means they are still on Excel 2003 which would be the icing on the cake of stupidity.

Nicola Sturgeon just accidentally called Margaret Ferrier "Margaret Covid" again!

Also expecting new restrictions announced this week with talk of a 'circuit breaker' of some sort.

a 32 amp/30 mA rcbo should do the trick

sorry I don't know anything about excel so just needlessly posting something I'm allegedly a confirmed expert on!

Various Scottish talking heads have used "short sharp shock" instead of circuit breaker which reminds me of the scary language used around borstals and keeping kids in line in the 70s using cunts worse that Mackay in 'Porridge'

(also hi from a fellow (former) spark!)

respec!

Does a circuit breaker include closing schools again or just everything else?

still chatting about the two weeks that'll cover half term across England i think?

too much Pink Floyd in 70s Scotland xp

hahahaha pic.twitter.com/XYPN9bWQuy

— dynamic_proxy (@dynamic_proxy) October 5, 2020

Another wonderful intervention:

Boris Johnson urges people to ‘go to the cinema’ following news Cineworld is temporarily closing UK sites https://t.co/sYuUP0PavI

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) October 5, 2020

October half-term holiday is just a week.

bars and cafes in Paris to close for 2 weeks starting tomorrow.

xp But it's not the same week - either 19th-23rd or 26th-30th?

yeah exactly, different areas seem to be out of sync so two weeks would cover all areas. obv that still *might* entail "shutting" schools for a week but i assume the logic is it'll just be a week

I expect Scotland will further restrict hospitality to coincide with the October school break. The language so far has been that anywhere there's tradeoffs, keeping the schools open remains a priority.

If they close hotels or holiday parks during the school break they'll take serious incoming as loads of people who had to cancel summer holidays have booked 'staycations' for the October week.

Turns out the short sharp shock thing was really out into practice under Thatcher (natch) so more early 80s than 70s.

https://youtu.be/OaulyuLQ1j0

Comments on this are all former lads listing their sentences. "Aldington 1980. Had a great time. Made a man of me."

Aye ok Carlin...

there was a bit of a(nother) 50's revival of hard-right macho warfare state attitude (see also clause 28) in the 80's because apparently that stage of the dying empire was a golden era.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUVBnjg0-Gw Thatcher at the start...

that'll show 'em

Well, not thatcher, but it's a quote from her? I don't remember.

the quote was Willie Whitelaw, it's mentioned in the borstal vid upthread, and i remember it being made at the time but i don't think the phrase was a new coinage tbh

Ah! thanks

they probably used the same phrase in the Kenyan gulags

The phrase was around for years (wikipedia has it in The Mikado and in a translation of the First Satire of Horace). It was repurposed for abusing teenagers following Whitelaw's speech and made its way into Thatcher's 1979 manifesto.

Tories love a G&S quote don't they?

In the Mikado it means having your head removed.

Today's Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man moment was Labour saying Rishi's conference speech (in which the requirement for nuff tonz of more austerity was darkly hinted at) "lacked detail".

https://scontent.fltn2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/120813621_10159363374576002_5272028791897433407_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&_nc_sid=dd9801&efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&_nc_ohc=WxyETtxpTLgAX-pa383&_nc_ht=scontent.fltn2-1.fna&tp=14&oh=a4b0270e1596b765d4d64985393b37b0&oe=5FA24C93

I regret to inform you that as a result of today’s jolly japes I was exposed to what i can only refer to as “lewd clippy fanart” on twitter.

This thread is quite concerning

We laugh at Lozza ‘Loser’ Fox but we’ll have to take this seriously, I’m afraid.

Not him. Those behind him.

He’s just a figurehead.

They have the cash - £5 million up front - and a plan.

The expertise, experience & contacts too.

But who are they?

Read on & pls RT

[thread]

— Labour of Love (@politicworm) September 29, 2020

was it posted here before?

It wasn’t. Good thread.

£5 million is a good legal fund, given that at least one person is getting in the lawyers after Fox called him a pedophile.

They might need to drop Fox, he is such an utterly useless failure of a human, but the Culture Wars UKIP is evidently going to continue.

fascist-melt luvvie dynasties in the UK suck so much shit, nearly all of them I mean - even loads of the overrated so-called lefty more melt-adjacent ones are awful people. I despair when I see people I usually respect repping for Danny Dyer just because he isn't an overt fascist like Plug from the bash street kids. The problem with Fox is possibly a Freudian malarkey, his dad was a rugged dish - he's an ugly weasel.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ejl3aezXsAME08O?format=jpg&name=900x900

Who can make a "Stoya..." joke out of that

Not Zarah Sultana wearing a jumper my dad owns and talking about Pat Finucane’s murder in the House is it?

This evening I voted against the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill.

I can't support legislation that could give undercover state agents the licence to murder, torture and commit sexual violence. pic.twitter.com/PK09NRP2dU

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) October 5, 2020

Wasting her breath. Proper, intelligent opposition is amendments at committee level.

173 Labour peers abstained on a division to block 'up to 55,000 evictions'.

The Tories won the division by 140 votes.

— Craig Hackney Cub (@CraigHackneyCub) October 5, 2020

maybe time to ditch that spider brooch lads

it makes me laugh when Tory PM's sulkily threaten to flood the Lords with Tories when the odd bill gets voted down.. perish the thought.